2004 Midwest Worm Meeting abstract 66
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Neuroscience Program and Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
In a collection of EMS-induced larval arrest mutations, two were found to be in rpc-1, which encodes the largest subunit of RNA polymerase III. rpc-1 mutants grow slowly and arrest development at the third larval (L3) stage. The two alleles carry missense mutations: m654 (G644E), which is in the channel domain, and s1139 (G1054E), which is in the cleft domain of the RNA polymerase large subunit. Both mutations are nulls. RNAi treatment of N2 resulted in developmental arrest of the progeny at the L2 stage; while identical treatment of an RNAi sensitive strain caused L1 arrest. Taken together, the data suggest that embryonic rpc-1 mRNA is maternally inherited. With transgenic animals, we found that the rpc-1 promoter / reporter construct was not equally expressed in all cells. It was expressed predominantly in head neurons, tail neurons and the intestine, and was weakly expressed during the dauer stage. Starvation silenced the promoter activity, whereas food triggered rpc-1 promoter activity in dauer recovery and in starved animals. The expression pattern suggests that rpc-1 transcription may be regulated by food availability.