Project description:Transcriptional profiling of early C. elegans embryos comparing control (N2) embryos with mes-2 mutant embryos at different developmental stages: 2E (24-40 cells), 4E (50-90 cells) and 8E stage (100-200 cells). Goal was to determine the effects of mes-2 loss on global gene expression as embryos transit from a developmentally plastic state (2E stage) to the onset of differentiation (8E stage). Our microarray data showed that early-expressed genes remain active, differentiation genes fail to reach wild-type levels in mes-2 mutant embryos at the 8E stage.
Project description:Comparison of gene expression profiles from C. elegans mutant strain CF1038 treated with L4440 and K02A4.1 RNAi and C. elegans mutant strain TU3311 treated with L4440 and B0412.2 RNAi for 5 days after L4 larvae stage. Jena Centre for Systems Biology of Ageing - JenAge (www.jenage.de)
Project description:Transcriptional profiling of early C. elegans embryos comparing control (N2) embryos with mes-2 mutant embryos at different developmental stages: 2E (24-40 cells), 4E (50-90 cells) and 8E stage (100-200 cells). Goal was to determine the effects of mes-2 loss on global gene expression as embryos transit from a developmentally plastic state (2E stage) to the onset of differentiation (8E stage). Our microarray data showed that early-expressed genes remain active, differentiation genes fail to reach wild-type levels in mes-2 mutant embryos at the 8E stage. Two-condition experiment, wild type vs. mes-2 embryos. Biological replicates: 3 control replicates, 3 mes-2 replicates for each stage.
Project description:Background: The force generating mechanism of muscle is evolutionarily ancient; the fundamental structural and functional components of the sarcomere are common to motile animals throughout phylogeny. Recent evidence suggests that the transcription factors that regulate muscle development are also conserved. Thus, a comprehensive description of muscle gene expression in a simple model organism should define a basic muscle transcriptome that is also expressed in animals with more complex body plans. To this end, we have applied Micro-Array Profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans Cells (MAPCeL) to muscle cell populations extracted from developing Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. Results: Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) was used to isolate myo-3::GFP-positive muscle cells, and their cultured derivatives, from dissociated early Caenorhabditis elegans embryos. Microarray analysis identified 6,693 expressed genes, 1,305 of which are enriched in the myo-3::GFP positive cell population relative to the average embryonic cell. The muscle-enriched gene set was validated by comparisons to known muscle markers, independently derived expression data, and GFP reporters in transgenic strains. These results confirm the utility of MAPCeL for cell type-specific expression profiling and reveal that 60% of these transcripts have human homologs. Conclusions: This study provides a comprehensive description of gene expression in developing Caenorhabditis elegans embryonic muscle cells. The finding that over half of these muscle-enriched transcripts encode proteins with human homologs suggests that mutant analysis of these genes in Caenorhabditis elegans could reveal evolutionarily conserved models of muscle gene function with ready application to human muscle pathologies. Keywords: embryonic muscle, myo-3::GFP