Expression patterns of predicted genes from the C. elegans genome sequence visualized by FISH in whole organisms

More than 10 megabases of contiguous genome sequence have been submitted to the databases by the Caenorhabditis elegans Genome Sequencing Consortium. To characterize the genes predicted from the sequence, we have developed high resolution FISH for visualization of mRNA distributions in whole animals. The high resolution and sensitivity afforded by the use of directly fluorescently labelled probes and confocal imaging permitted mRNA distributions to be recorded at the cellular and subcellular level. Expression patterns were obtained for 8 out of 10 genes in an initial test set of predicted gene sequences, indicating that FISH is an effective means of characterizing predicted genes in C. elegans.