Meet the mutants
From Wikionchus
Forward genetics, the random generation of mutations by chemicals or UV-light, is may be the most powerful tool to study developmental processes in Pristionchus. Like in the model organism C. elegans there are some mutant classes that can be easily distinguished under the dissecting microscope. They are often helpful as morphological markers.
To do:
Get plates with the following mutants:
- dumpy (dpy)
- uncoordinated (unc)
- egg laying defective (egl)
- high incidence of males (him)
Observe them under the dissecting microscope: How do they differ from wildtype? What might be going wrong here? How could one find the mutated gene?
Some words about nomenclature:
In Pristionchus genetics we adopted nomenclature rules from C. elegans. Phenotypes are described by a three-letter code(dpy, unc, him..). Mutants belonging to the same complementation group get a gene name: e.g. unc-1, mab-5, lin-17 etc. Different alleles of the same gene are distinguished by their allele numbers, a two-letter code with a number: tu-106 and tu-108 are two alleles of lin-17, for example. In addition, just to confuse things, every strain that is frozen also carries a strain number, which allows one to find it in the freezer: PS312 is the Pristionchus pacificus wild-type strain from California, RS106 is one from Poland. Don't worry.
To read:
S. Brenner "The genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans" , Genetics 77(71-94) (1974)
E.M. Jorgensen & S.E. Mango The art and design of genetic screens: Caenorhabditis elegans, Nat. Rev. Genet. 3(356-369) (2002)
C. Kenning, I Kipping & R.J.Sommer Isolation of mutations with dumpy-like phenotypes and of collagen genes in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus , Genesis 40:176-183 (2004)
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