High impact information on eat-5

• Double mutants of mek-1 with an eat-5, eat-11 or eat-18 mutation, which are characterized by a limited feeding defect, showed distinct growth defects under normal conditions [1].
• We show that a gene fusion of eat-5 to the green fluorescent protein is expressed in pharyngeal muscles. unc-7 and eat-5 are two of at least sixteen members of this family in C. elegans as determined by database searches and PCR-based screens [2].
• We have isolated and characterized the C. elegans gene eat-5, which is required for synchronized pharyngeal muscle contractions, and find that it is a new member of this family [2].
• Injection of carboxyfluorescein into muscles of the posterior pharynx demonstrates that all pharyngeal muscles are dye-coupled in wild-type animals; in eat-5 mutants, however, muscles of the anterior pharynx are no longer dye-coupled to posterior pharyngeal muscles [2].
• In eat-5 mutants the motions of the different parts of the pharynx were poorly synchronized. eat-6 and eat-12 mutants failed to relax their pharyngeal muscles properly [3].

Biological context of eat-5

• Simultaneous electrical and video recordings reveal that in eat-5 mutants, action potentials of muscles in the anterior and posterior pharynx are unsynchronized [2].
• eat-5 and unc-7 represent a multigene family in Caenorhabditis elegans involved in cell-cell coupling [2].

References