RNA regulation of asymmetric cell division in Caenorhabditis elegans (2013)

Undergraduates: Jay Zhang, Erin Osborne Nishimura (Post-doc)

Faculty Advisor: Jason Lieb
Department: Biology

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The asymmetric division of the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote into AB and P1 blastomeres is required for proper embryogenesis, and is a useful model for studying similar events involved in many cancers. To identify maternal RNA transcripts that function as cell-fate determinants, RNAseq was performed on isolated 2-cell stage blastomeres to measure transcriptome-wide differential enrichment. This method was verified for select transcripts using qRT-PCR. The top 43 differentially expressed transcripts were screened by an RNAi feeding assay in wildtype N2 and hypersensitive rrf-3 strains, revealing 16 of 43 (37%) exhibit embryonic lethal or maternal sterile phenotypes. Of these lethal transcripts, the early embryogenesis of T04A8.7 and puf-3 were selected for further study using time-lapse fluorescent microscopy and automated cell lineage tracing. Preliminary data suggests these RNAi transcripts induce embryonic arrest at specific developmental time points.