West Coast Worm Meeting Abstracts - Caenorhabditis elegans ...

West Coast Worm Meeting 2000
UNC-23 IS A MEMBER OF THE BAG FAMILY OF
CHAPERONE REGULATORS
Poupak Rahmani, Donald Moerman
Department of Zoology. University of British Columbia, 6270 University Blvd. Vancouver, BC Canada.
V6T 1Z4
Mutations in the unc-23 gene result in detachment of the anterior body wall musculature and a bent-head
phenotype (Waterston et al, 1980). This phenotype is not observed when animals are grown in liquid
culture (Bullerjahn and Riddle, pers. comm.) Neither muscle cell positioning nor myofilament assembly is
affected in liquid grown unc-23 animals; muscle cell attachment, however, is affected since a small
amount of stress applied results in detachment of the muscle cells from the hypodermis.The result of
immunological staining of unc-23 animals with antibodies to basement membrane and hypodermal
components suggest that the primary defect in unc-23 animals is located within the hypodermis. We have
recently cloned unc-23, and found it to be a protein most similar to a chaperone regulator known as
BAG-2 (BCL2-associated athanogene-2). In humans, the BAG family of chaperone regulators contains a
conserved 45 amino acid region near their C termini (the BAG domain) that binds Hsp70/Hsc70 and
control their chaperone activity (Takayama et al. 1999). Human BAG-2 and UNC-23 share 40% amino
acid identity and 62% similarity over the BAG domain and its upstream region. We are currently
attempting to obtain a full-length unc-23::GFP transgenic line to study the spatial and temporal expression
pattern of this gene
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