Originally posted on WormAtlas by “smork”, June 07, 2005
I’m collaborating with Jakob Rukov in Copenhagen, and doing comparative studies of C. elegans and C. briggsae.
I was wondering whether C. briggsae has a fixed number of cells…and if so: how many?
It’s pretty difficult to find any information on C. briggsae morphology appart from the notion that it is “almost similar” to C. elegans.
thanx in advance…
S?ren M?rk
Department of Evolutionary Biology
Institute of Biology, University of Copenhagen
Denmark
smork AT bi.ku.dk
Originally posted on WormAtlas by “hall”, June 08, 2005
I have no data here on the anatomy of C. Briggsae. You might direct this question directly to the Sternberg lab or the Sommer lab, or perhaps to the Fitch lab. If the vulva lineage differs, that might lead to a slight change in cell number, including perhaps a change in number of nuclei. Likewise, if the pattern of cell fusions is different, perhaps in the male tail, this could produce a change in final number of cell compartments, even if the number of nuclei were the same.
The labs mentioned above have dealt with issues like this directly, and they should have more information.
Depending on how you define the “cell number”, this answer gets a bit complex in a species where so much cell fusion can occur during normal development. Similarly, a few cells actually undergo extra rounds of nuclear divisions without cell divisions. Variations in fusion patterns from one animal to the next will make the answer a bit fuzzy. This could the principal source of ambiguity regarding a “fixed cell number”.
David Hall