Sundaram M, Greenwald I
Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, New Jersey 08544.
Genetics. 1993 Nov;135(3):755-63. doi: 10.1093/genetics/135.3.755.
The lin-12 gene of Caenorhabditis elegans is thought to encode a receptor for intercellular signals that specify certain cell fates during development. We describe several alleles of lin-12 that reduce but do not eliminate lin-12 activity (hypomorphic alleles). These alleles cause a novel egg-laying defective (Egl) phenotype in hermaphrodites as well as incompletely penetrant cell fate transformations seen with high penetrance in lin-12 null mutants. Characterization of the Egl phenotype revealed additional roles of lin-12 in the development of the egg-laying system that were not apparent from studying lin-12 null mutants: lin-12 activity is required for proper early vulval morphogenesis as well as for some unknown later aspect of egg-laying system development. Reversion of the Egl phenotype caused by one lin-12 hypomorphic allele was used to identify potential interacting genes as described in the accompanying paper.
秀丽隐杆线虫的lin-12基因被认为编码一种细胞间信号受体,该信号在发育过程中决定特定的细胞命运。我们描述了几种lin-12等位基因,它们降低但并未消除lin-12活性(亚效等位基因)。这些等位基因在雌雄同体中导致一种新的产卵缺陷(Egl)表型,以及在lin-12缺失突变体中高频率出现的不完全显性的细胞命运转变。对Egl表型的特征分析揭示了lin-12在产卵系统发育中的其他作用,这些作用在研究lin-12缺失突变体时并不明显:lin-12活性对于早期外阴的正常形态发生以及产卵系统发育后期某些未知方面是必需的。如随附论文所述,利用由一个lin-12亚效等位基因引起的Egl表型的回复来鉴定潜在的相互作用基因。