TY  - GEN
T1  - Transcriptional Response to a Dauer-Inducing Ascaroside Cocktail in Late L1 in C. elegans
AU  - Cohen, Sarah M
AU  - Sun, Jessica J
AU  - Schroeder, Frank C
AU  - Sternberg, Paul W
DO  - 10.17912/micropub.biology.000397
UR  - http://beta.micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-000397/
AB  - C. elegans larvae choose between dauer diapause and immediate reproductive development in two phases, the first being a choice between L2 and L2d, and the second between dauer and L3 (Golden and Riddle 1984). We used RNA-seq to study the transcriptomic response of well-fed C. elegans when exposed to a cocktail of diapause-inducing ascarosides (ascr#2, ascr#3, and ascr#8) during the L1 larval stage when they first receive cues from their environment and then adapt via developmental programming (Kaplan et al., 2011). This research was performed in N2 wild-type worms and daf-22(ok693) mutants that lack an enzyme necessary for the biosynthesis of ascaroside pheromones (reviewed by Ludewig and Schroeder 2013). We found that early exposure to ascarosides triggers a pervasive transcriptional response that may drive diapause induction within as little as three hours. In N2, 362 genes were significantly differentially expressed at p = 0.001, while in daf-22, 1,007 genes were significantly differentially expressed at p = 0.001. The daf-22 mutant may have more significantly expressed genes when exposed to ascarosides indicating a stronger response as it has never encountered ascaroside signaling previously, even at low levels.
PY  - 2021
JO  - microPublication Biology
ER  -