Alterations in cell lineage following laser ablation of cells in the somatic gonad of Caenorhabditis elegans.

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摘要：

The postembryonic cell lineage of the somatic gonad is essentially invariant in Caenorhabditis elegans ( J.E. Kimble and D. Hirsh, 1979, Develop. Biol. 70, 396–417). The two exceptions to this rule of invariance involve a natural ambiguity in the ancestry of certain cells such that each of two precursor cells assumes one of two alternative fates in a given animal. In this paper, experiments are reported in which laser microsurgery is used to kill individual cells in the developing somatic gonad. Such intervention perturbs the normal environment of the remaining cells; a change observed in the expected behavior of these cells suggests that extrinsic cues may normally play a role in controlling that behavior. Several different lineage alterations have been observed after laser microsurgery in the somatic gonad. These include switches in the type of lineage followed by a given precursor cell, reversals in lineage polarity, duplications of a lineage, and alteratiions in the number of cells produced in the lineage. The only cases in which cells switch from one lineage type to another involve pairs of cells which exhibit natural ambiguity. In most cases, the interactions inferred from these changes seem to occur between neighboring somatic gonadal cells. In one case, induction of the vulva, the interaction occurs between a single somatic gonadal cell, the anchor cell, and the precursors to the vulva in a neighboring tissue, the hypodermis. The roles of intrinsic and extrinsic cues in controlling normally invariant cell lineages are discussed.

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关键词：

Uterus Embryo, Nonmammalian Animals Caenorhabditis Lasers Female Genetic Variation Disorders of Sex Development