nekl-2 and
nekl-3. Consistent with our previous study (YOCHEM et al. 2015), these reporters were expressed strongly within the epidermis beginning in late embryonic development. NEKL-3 strains tagged with either mKate2 or NeonGreen displayed a pattern of expression similar to that of MLT-3, although both MLT-3 and NEKL-3 had somewhat variable patterns of expression between specimens. NEKL-3 was generally dispersed throughout the
hyp7 cytosol and was present in variable-sized puncta. NEKL-3::NeonGreen puncta strongly overlapped with MLT-3::mKate2 expression in many animals, although in some specimens there were more NEKL-3::NeonGreen puncta than MLT-3::mKate2 puncta. In contrast, NEKL- 3 and MLT-4 did not show strong colocalization, consistent with the weak overlap between MLT-3 and MLT-4. However, NEKL-3 puncta were observed in some animals near the
hyp7-seam cell boundary and showed partial colocalization with MLT-4 in this region. Likewise, NEKL-2 and NEKL-3 did not generally colocalize, consistent with our previous results using multicopy reporters (YOCHEM et al. 2015). Nevertheless, we did observe occasional overlap of NEKL-2 and NEKL-3 at the
hyp7-seam cell boundary and, in some animals, we observed moderate- to-extensive colocalization of puncta in other regions of
hyp7.