A global profile of germline gene expression in C. elegans.
Reinke V, Smith HE, Nance J, Wang J, Van Doren C, Begley R, Jones SJ, Davis EB, Scherer S, Ward S, Kim SK.
Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, California 94305, USA.
We used DNA microarrays to profile gene expression patterns in the C. elegans germline and identified 1416 germline-enriched transcripts that define three groups. The sperm-enriched group contains an unusually large number of protein kinases and phosphatases. The oocyte-enriched group includes potentially new components of embryonic signaling pathways. The germline-intrinsic group, defined as genes expressed similarly in germlines making only sperm or only oocytes, contains a family of piwi-related genes that may be important for stem cell proliferation. Finally, examination of the chromosomal location of germline transcripts revealed that sperm-enriched and germline-intrinsic genes are nearly absent from the X chromosome, but oocyte-enriched genes are not.
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PMID: 11030340 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]