A: The parental effects of mutants
emb-27 and
emb-30 can be resolved into maternal and paternal effects (Madison Abst. '93) with temperature sensitive periods in meiosis. The phenotypes are variable and complex, so we are glad to have lots of help from D. Shakes' group on
emb-27 and S. Siddiqui's on
emb-30. Both mutants appear to have problems in centrosome segregation, giving post-fertilization anomalies. In the 1-cell maternal arrest, P-granules collapse around the central nuclei, but segregate normally in paternal effect embryos. B: Altered early division patterns in certain mutants of the Goettingen set (Denich et al.) suggest blastomere identity changes which we are starting to examine more directly:
emb-13: E like C;
emb-34: all lineages identical except AB (& random orient.);
emb-5: all identical (extra P mit.);
emb-21: double posterior (AB-less bicaudal?);
emb-22: slow clock C: Finally, antibodies to mammalian protein kinase c (PKC) also stain the CDR's described by Waterston's lab.