Isabella Plati
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Matthias Truttmann
Research Mentor School/College/Department: molecular and integrative physiology / Medicine
Program: CG
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors: Isabella Plati, Bhaskar Chatterjee
Abstract
Prior research suggests that severity of the multivulva (MuV) phenotype in C. elegans is an inheritable characteristic, when the phenotype occurs as a result of a homozygous let-60(n1046) mutation. My goal is to determine if the MuV penetrance and/or severity of a parent animal correlates with that of their offspring across several C. elegans strains. Each of these strains are homozygous for mutations in genes that regulate vulval development such as lin-12 and lin-3. In this study, parents were categorized by the number of vulva-like tumors they exhibited (severity), ranging from no MuV to severe MuV. Then, tumor counts of the offspring were microscopically determined and compared to those of the parents. The aim of this project was to determine if all strains would demonstrate similar inheritance profiles as previously observed between parents and offspring homozygous for the let-60(n1046) mutation. Given that many studies involving MuV require analysis of phenotype severity, not accounting for phenotype inheritance could result in misleading or ambiguous results. Therefore, establishing a correlation between severity/penetrance of the phenotype between parents and offspring across multiple strains would hitherto unveil a novel phenomenon, in addition to improving rigor in scientific studies involving the MuV phenotype.
