Does anyone have a suggestion for a good marginal cell marker (preferably nuclear)? An antibody or reporter construct could work as long as it is exclusively in the marginal cells and expressed in larval stage worms. Thank you for your suggestions!
I’ve used a pax-1 nuclear marker before – it’s expressed in all the MCs as early as 3-fold, but there is limited expression in some of the pharyngeal epithelial cells and pm8 as well (see http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1001060). I think we got the H2B tagged nuclear construct from the Mango lab.
Thank you for your suggestion Vikas. The publication reports that the pax-1 reporter was undetectable in larva and adults. These are the stages I am interested in looking at. Have you been able to detect it at these stages? Thanks,
pax-1 is definitely expressed in embryos and L1s but expression is gone by L2 onward. I know my old lab (the Gaudet lab) identified a marginal cell specific gene call marg-1 (though the “marg” gene designation was never official) that was expressed at all stages. Contact Aidan Dineen (aedineen AT ucalgary DOT ca). He was the last person working on it, and can probably send you the reporter (or at least tell you the sequence name of the gene).