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In C. elegans, promoter::GFP
approaches can be used to characterize expression at the single-cell
resolution level; however this kind of analysis is extremely time
consuming and is therefore very difficult to adapt to genome-scale
analyses. |
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To study the expression at the level of a large population of animals with a quantitative read-out, we used a "Complex Object Parametric Analysis and Sorter" (COPAS)
equipped with a profiler system that can analyse up to ~100
animals/sec. This instrument is a flow cytometer with a flow cell that
can accommodate objects as large as 1,500 microns. Inside the COPAS
profiler flow cell, the laser beam has been optically focused to a 10
µm section, giving rise to fluorescent emission profiles in which
details the size of a single cell can be resolved axially along the C. elegans
body. By studying large numbers of animals of all sizes/ages at high
throughput, it is possible to generate an overview of the promoter
activity throughout post-embryonic development in a digitized format. |
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To date we have acquired spatiotemporal expression pattern for 1,992 GFP strains which,
after accounting for redundancy in transgene content, report the
activity of the proximal promoter of 1,610 unique predicted gene loci
This Project is a joint collaboration between
the Vidal Lab (DFCI, Harvard Medical School, USA), the Hope Lab (Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, UK), The British Columbia C. elegans Gene Expression Consortium (University of British Columbia, Canada) , the Mohler Lab (Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling, University of Connecticut, USA) and the Center for Complex Network Research, University of Notre Dame, USA.
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