Quantitative Analysis of Germline Mitosis in Adult C. Elegans.
From: Department of Biology, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, 1009 Silver Center, New York, NY 10003, USA.
Developmental biology
- Publish Date: Apr 2006
- ISSN: 0012-1606
- Volume: 292
- Issue: 1
- Pages: 142-51
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Maciejowski John, Ugel Nadia, Mishra Bud, et al. Quantitative Analysis of Germline Mitosis in Adult C. Elegans.. Dev. Biol. Apr 2006;292:142-51
Abstract
Certain aspects of the distal gonad of C. elegans are comparable to niche/stem cell systems in other organisms. The distal tip cell (DTC) caps a blind-ended tube; only the distal germ cells maintain proliferation in response to signaling from the DTC via the GLP-1/Notch signaling pathway in the germ line. Fruitful comparison between this system and other stem cell systems is limited by a lack of basic information regarding germ cell division behavior in C. elegans. Here, we explore the spatial pattern of cell division frequency in the adult C. elegans germ line relative to distance from the distal tip. We mapped the positions of actively dividing germline nuclei in over 600 fixed gonad preparations including the wild type and a gain-of-function ligand-responsive GLP-1 receptor mutant with an extended mitotic zone. One particularly surprising observation from these data is that the frequency of cell divisions is lower in distal-most cells-cells that directly contact the distal tip cell body-relative to cells further proximal, a difference that persists in the gain-of-function GLP-1 mutant. These results suggest that cell division frequency in the distal-most cells may be suppressed or otherwise controlled in a complex manner. Further, our data suggest that the presence of an active cell division influences the probability of observing simultaneous cell divisions in the same gonad arm, and that simultaneous divisions tend to cluster spatially. We speculate that this system behaves similarly to niche/stem cell/transit amplifying cell systems in other organisms.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Animals, Caenorhabditis elegans, Female, Germ Cells, Glucagon-Like Peptide 1, Gonads, Ligands, Male, Mitosis, Mitotic Index, Receptors, Notch, Signal Transduction
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 16480707
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.