Abstract
The intestine is one of the major organs in C. elegans and is largely responsible for food digestion and assimilation as well as the synthesis and storage of macromolecules. In addition, the intestine is emerging as a powerful experimental system in which to study such universal biological phenomena as vesicular trafficking, biochemical clocks, stress responses and aging. The present chapter describes some of these many and varied properties of the C. elegans intestine: the embryonic cell lineage, intestine morphogenesis, structure and physiology of the intestinal cell and, finally, the transcription factor network controlling intestine development and function.
Highlights
The intestine is one of the major organs of C. elegans, comprising roughly one third of the total somatic mass
The present chapter aims to describe the varied aspects of intestinal biology in C. elegans, beginning with the intestinal cell lineage, development and morphogenesis, and proceeding to the cell biology of the polarized enterocyte, to the wide range of biochemical reactions that are centred in the intestine and to the transcription factor network that regulates all of these genes
The basement membrane surrounding the intestine has three of the four major constitutents found in other C. elegans basement membranes: laminin α and β chains, nidogen/entactin (Kang and Kramer, 2000) and type IV collagen (Graham et al, 1997), all detected on the surface of the intestine beginning in early morphogenesis phase
Summary
The intestine is one of the major organs of C. elegans, comprising roughly one third of the total somatic mass. Many additional views of the C. elegans intestine, especially transmission electron micrographs, can be inspected at Wormatlas. At the peak of egg laying, an adult hermaphrodite converts her body mass to embryos once per day (Hirsh et al, 1976), corresponding to several million bacteria consumed, and it is likely that the majority of this mass passes through the intestine (ignoring the possibility of gas or water exchange across the cuticle). The term “intestine” will be used in preference to “gut”; in other metazoons, “gut” usually refers to the entire digestive tract (pharynx, intestine and rectum, for C. elegans)
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