The Caenorhabditis elegans rol-6 gene, which interacts with the sqt-1 collagen gene to determine organismal morphology, encodes a collagen.

Molecular and Cellular Biology - Tập 10 Số 5 - Trang 2081-2089 - 1990
James M. Kramer1,2, Randall P. French3, E C Park1,2, J J Johnson1,2
1Department of Molecular Biology, Massachu-setts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114.
2Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois, P.O. Box 4348, Chicago, Illinois 60680,
3and Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 021392

Tóm tắt

The rol-6 gene is one of the more than 40 loci in Caenorhabditis elegans that primarily affect organismal morphology. Certain mutations in the rol-6 gene produce animals that have the right roller phenotype, i.e., they are twisted into a right-handed helix. The rol-6 gene interacts with another gene that affects morphology, sqt-1; a left roller allele of sqt-1 acts as a dominant suppressor of a right roller allele of rol-6. The sqt-1 gene has previously been shown to encode a collagen. We isolated and sequenced the rol-6 gene and found that it also encodes a collagen. The rol-6 gene was identified by physical mapping of overlapping chromosomal deficiencies that cover the gene and by identification of an allele-specific restriction site alteration. The amino acid sequence of the collagen encoded by rol-6 is more similar to that of the sqt-1 collagen than to any of the other ten C. elegans cuticle collagen sequences compared. The locations of cysteine residues flanking the Gly-X-Y repeat regions of rol-6 and sqt-1 are identical, but differ from those in the other collagens. The sequence similarities between rol-6 and sqt-1 indicate that they represent a new collagen subfamily in C. elegans. These findings suggest that these two collagens physically interact, possibly explaining the genetic interaction seen between the rol-6 and sqt-1 genes.

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Molecular and Cellular Biology

Tập 10 Số 5

2081-2089

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