Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: ABSTRACT The sexual identity of specific tissues can be altered through cell-autonomous manipulation of the sex determination pathway in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans . Previously described sexually mosaic strains carried multicopy transgenic arrays that are potentially subject to transgene silencing or misexpression artefacts. We used here the CRISPR/Cas9 system to engineer strains in which coding sequences for either a masculinizing agent (FEM-3) or a feminizing agent (intracellular domain of TRA-2) are inserted with a trans-splicing system at the 3’ end of endogenous genetic loci that are known to be expressed in either a neuron-specific ( rab-3 ) or gut-specific ( elt-2 ) manner. We validate the tissue-specific sex-transformations induced by these genomic manipulations through expression analysis of known sex-specific genes and through assaying behavioral readouts. These strains may serve the worm community as standard reference tools to study the consequences of tissue-specific sex transformations.
Authors: Chien-Po Liao, Hongzhu Ji, Oliver Hobert
Institutions: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Genetics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221452432