A study of morphology of Caenorhabditis elegans: A mutant of Caenorhabditis elegans with dumpy and temperature‐sensitive roller phenotype

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Abstract
The wild‐type nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has an elongated and spindle‐shaped body, whereas the dumpy mutant has a shorter body with approximately the same diameter. Although the wild‐type nematode moves forward by producing sinusoidal waves along the body, the roller mutant moves by rotating the body left or right around its long‐body axis. A temperature‐sensitive morphological mutant which develops into an adult with dumpy phenotype, at 15°, but with roller phenotype at 25°, in addition to dumpy phenotype, was isolated. The dumpy phenotype appeared at the first larval stage and was complete at the fourth larval stage; the roller behavior was also expressed at the fourth larval stage. The heterozygous offspring (F1), produced by crossing the mutant hermaphrodite with wild‐type males, were rollers in both hermaphrodites and males. Therefore, the dumpy character is autosomal recessive, and the roller character is dominant in heterozygote but cold‐sensitive in homozygote. The dumpy mutation was mapped as allele of dpy‐10 gene of linkage group II (LG II). The F2 progeny, produced by self‐fertilization of the F1 roller hermaphrodite, segregated to wild, dumpy, and roller animals in a ratio of 1:1:2. An attempt to isolate from the F2 generation the roller mutant which produced no dumpy progeny was entirely unsuccessful. Therefore, the dumpy and the roller phenotypes are produced by closely linked mutations or perhaps by a single mutation.
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