Figure 1.
flp-1 signaling is not required for chemosensation, but its signaling can affect the chemosensory and dispersal responses:Similar to wild type,
flp-1 mutants chemotax towards benzaldehyde (A) and disperse in the absence of food (B). However, loss of
flp-1 enhances or slightly suppresses the chemosensory defects of
daf-10 and
tax-4 mutants, respectively (A)(***, p<0.001, significantly different than N2; +++,++ p<0.001, p<0.01 significantly different than
daf-10 flp-1, #, p<0.05, significantly different than
tax-4). By contrast, loss of
flp-1 suppresses or causes dispersal defects in
daf-10 or
tax-4 mutants, respectively (B) (****, p<0.0001, significantly different than N2, ++++, p<0.0001). Methods: Chemotaxis assays were performed and the chemotaxis index was calculated as described (Bargmann & Horvitz, 1991); each trial had at least 60 animals. For the dispersal assay, L4 animals were picked for use the following day. Six 1-day adults were transferred to a plate without food before transferring to a new plate without food; the locations of the six animals after 15 min were averaged for each plate and constituted one trial. The phenotypes were unknown to the scorers on the chemotaxis and dispersal assays. An unknown, which corresponded to N2 (N2-C), was included in all assays.