Description

Summary a new allele of pkd-2 was isolated in a behavioral genetic screen for male mating defects, and found to result in a substitution of Arginine for Glycine in the equivalent of human PKD2 alanine 615.

Article
The C. elegans ortholog of polcystin-2 is encoded by pkd-2 (Barr et al., 2001). From an EMS screen of a plg-1; him-5 strain for male mating defective mutants and a secondary behavioral screen for defects in discrete steps of male mating behavior, namely response to contact to hermaphrodites and vulval location (described in Schindelman et al., 2006), we identified a new allele of pkd-2 based on mapping and complementation.  sy680fails to complement pkd-2(sy606) for defects in response to contact with hermaphrodite and vulval location. Here we report the sequence of this allele. PCR amplification and sequencing of pkd-2  exons indicated that there was a c–>t transition in the transcribed DNA strand (g–>a in the pkd-2 sense strand; Figure 1A).  This change leads to an altered codon, a Glycine to Arginine substitution the PKD-2 protein. This position corresponds to A615 of the human protein (Figure 1B).