title: The Caenorhabditis elegans rol-6 gene, which interacts with the sqt-1 collagen gene to determine organismal morphology, encodes a collagen.
abstract: The rol-6 gene is one of the more than 40 loci in Caenorhabditis elegans that primarily affect organismal morphology. Certain mutations in the rol-6 gene produce animals that have the right roller phenotype, i.e., they are twisted into a right-handed helix. The rol-6 gene interacts with another gene that affects morphology, sqt-1; a left roller allele of sqt-1 acts as a dominant suppressor of a right roller allele of rol-6. The sqt-1 gene has previously been shown to encode a collagen. We isolated and sequenced the rol-6 gene and found that it also encodes a collagen. The rol-6 gene was identified by physical mapping of overlapping chromosomal deficiencies that cover the gene and by identification of an allele-specific restriction site alteration. The amino acid sequence of the collagen encoded by rol-6 is more similar to that of the sqt-1 collagen than to any of the other ten C. elegans cuticle collagen sequences compared. The locations of cysteine residues flanking the Gly-X-Y repeat regions of rol-6 and sqt-1 are identical, but differ from those in the other collagens. The sequence similarities between rol-6 and sqt-1 indicate that they represent a new collagen subfamily in C. elegans. These findings suggest that these two collagens physically interact, possibly explaining the genetic interaction seen between the rol-6 and sqt-1 genes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago 60680.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.forename: R P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: French
authors.forename: E C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002107:Caenorhabditis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D003094:Collagen / Q000235:genetics*; D003360:Cosmids; D005796:Genes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009024:Morphogenesis; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D015183:Restriction Mapping
chemical_list: D003094:Collagen