A major gene expression change consistent with higher de novo fat synthesis in nhr-64 worms is a 4.5 fold increase in expression of pod-2 (W09B6.1), which encodes acetyl-CoA carboxylase.
An anti-GFP antibody was used to immunoprecipitate RPM-1::GFP from whole worm lysates, and RPM-1 binding proteins were identified using mass spectrometry and de novo peptide sequencing. Using this approach, authors identified a phosphatase, PPM-2 (T23F11.1).
Loss of die-1 caused a strong de-repression of cog-1::gfp expression in ASEL. Furthermore, expressing die-1 ectopically in the ASER neuron demonstrated that die-1 is not only necessary but also sufficient to repress cog-1 expression.