Worm Breeder's Gazette 10(1): 30
These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.
At the Cold Spring Harbor worm meeting last May, we described the identification of a Tc1 element genetically linked to the deg-1 gene. We obtained putative insertion mutants of deg-1 by isolating revertants of the dominant allele u38 in a mut-2 background. Tc1 elements newly appearing in 3 such revertants were tested for genetic lineage with deg-1 using the flanking markers dpy-6 and dpy-7. Two putative excision strains were also obtained, by choosing phenotypically deg-1 animals from reversion strains maintained in mutator backgrounds. One particular Tc1 element is closely linked to the reversion site and is not observed in DNA from the corresponding excision strain. We have now cloned a 4.7 kb restriction fragment containing this Tc1 element. We plan to use transformation experiments to test whether the sequences we have cloned are part of the deg-1 gene. Since the deg-1 gene is defined by the dominant mutation u38, we will microinject DNA cloned from mutant u38 animals. We have therefore prepared an EMBL3 lambda library from u38 DNA, which we are currently probing with our genomic clone. Phage DNAs from the lambda library which cross-hybridize with sequences flanking the cloned Tc1 element will be microinjected into oocytes of wild-type animals to see if expression of the Deg-1 phenotype can be induced.