| Citation | George-Raizen JB, Shockley KR, Trojanowski NF, Lamb AL, Raizen DM. Dynamically-expressed prion-like proteins form a cuticle in the pharynx of Caenorhabditis elegans. Biol Open, 2014. |
| PubMed ID | 25361578 |
| Short Description | Dynamically-expressed prion-like proteins form a cuticle in the pharynx of Caenorhabditis elegans. GEO Record: GSE46291 GSE46288 GSE46289 Platform: GPL200 Download gene-centric, log2 transformed data: WBPaper00045960.ce.mr.csv |
| # of Conditions | 21 |
Full Description
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In molting animals, a cuticular extracellular matrix forms the first barrier to infection and other environmental insults. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans there are two types of cuticle: a well-studied collagenous cuticle lines the body, and a poorly-understood chitinous cuticle lines the pharynx. In the posterior end of the pharynx is the grinder, a tooth-like cuticular specialization that crushes food prior to transport to the intestine for digestion. We here show that the grinder increases in size only during the molt. To gain molecular insight into the structure of the grinder and pharyngeal cuticle, we performed a microarray analysis to identify mRNAs increased during the molt. We found strong transcriptional induction during the molt of 12 of 15 previously identified abu genes encoding Prion-like (P) glutamine (Q) and asparagine (N) rich PQN proteins, as well as 15 additional genes encoding closely related PQN proteins. abu/pqn genes, which we name the abu/pqn paralog group (APPG) genes, were expressed in pharyngeal cells and the proteins encoded by two APPG genes we tested localized to the pharyngeal cuticle. Deleting the APPG gene abu-14 caused abnormal pharyngeal cuticular structures and knocking down other APPG genes resulted in abnormal cuticular function. We propose that APPG proteins promote the assembly and function of a unique cuticular structure. The strong developmental regulation of the APPG genes raises the possibility that such genes would be identified in transcriptional profiling experiments in which the animals' developmental stage is not precisely staged. Experimental Details: WBPaper00045960:L3_rep1 WBPaper00045960:L3_rep2 WBPaper00045960:L3_rep3 WBPaper00045960:L3-lethargus_rep1 WBPaper00045960:L3-lethargus_rep2 WBPaper00045960:L3-lethargus_rep3 WBPaper00045960:L4_rep1 WBPaper00045960:L4_rep2 WBPaper00045960:L4_rep3 WBPaper00045960:L4_rep4 WBPaper00045960:L4_rep5 WBPaper00045960:L4-lethargus_rep1 WBPaper00045960:L4-lethargus_rep2 WBPaper00045960:L4-lethargus_rep3 WBPaper00045960:L4-lethargus_rep4 WBPaper00045960:L4-lethargus_rep5 WBPaper00045960:Adult_rep1 WBPaper00045960:Adult_rep2 WBPaper00045960:Adult_rep3 WBPaper00045960:Adult_rep4 WBPaper00045960:Adult_rep5. |
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