Petr Liby1, Marketa Kostrouchova1, Michal Pohludka1, Jaroslav Vohanka2, Eva Brozova2, Marta Kostrouchova2 and Zdenek Kostrouch1. BIR-1 is a member of the Inhibitors of Apoptosis protein family that is involved in the regulation of microtubule organization, condensation of chromosomes and cell division in C. elegans as well as in vertebrates. In C. elegans,
bir-1 is organized in an operon together with SKIP, a transcription and splicing cofactor.
bir-1 inhibition induces developmental defects including dpy and egl phenotypes. Here we studied the effect of
bir-1 inhibition by RNAi in L1 larval stage using whole genome microarrays (Affymetrix). Microarrays detected changes in expression of several developmentally active collagen genes in
bir-1 inhibited larvae. We further characterized the effect of
bir-1 inhibition on selected collagen gene expression and induction of dpy phenotype. Acknowledgement: We thank Drs. A. Fire for GFP construct, vectors and host used in RNAi and M.W. Krause for support and advice. We thank the NIDDK Microarrays facility for performing the microarrays analysis. The work was supported by the grant 303/03/0333 from the Czech Science Foundation, by the grant NC-7554 from the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic and by the grant 0021620806 from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.