Mapping a telomere using the translocation eT1(III;V) in Caenorhabditis elegans

In Caenorhabditis elegans, individuals heterozygous for a reciprocal translocation produce reduced numbers of viable progeny. The proposed explanation is that the segregational pattern generates aneuploid progeny. In this article, we have examined the genotype of arrested embryonic classes. Using appropriate primers in PCR amplifications, we identified one class of arrested embryo, which could be readily recognized by its distinctive spot phenotype. The corresponding aneuploid genotype was expected to be lacking the left portion of chromosome V, from the eT1 breakpoint to the left (unc-60) end. The phenotype of the homozygotes lacking this DNA was a stage 2 embryonic arrest with a dark spot coinciding with the location in wild-type embryos of birefringent gut granules. Unlike induced events, this deletion results from meiotic segregation patterns, eliminating complexity associated with unknown material that may have been added to the end of a broken chromosome. We have used the arrested embryos, lacking chromosome V left sequences, to map a telomere probe. Unique sequences adjacent to the telomeric repeats in the clone cTel3 were missing in the arrested spot embryo. The result was confirmed by examining aneuploid segregants from a second translocation, hT1(I;V). Thus, we concluded that the telomere represented by clone cTel3 maps to the left end of chromosome V. In this analysis, we have shown that reciprocal translocations can be used to generate segregational aneuploids. These aneuploids are deleted for terminal sequences at the noncrossover ends of the C. elegans autosomes.