Presenter(s): Cailan Feingold—Biology
Faculty Mentor(s): Diana Libuda, Cori Cahoon
Session 3: The Substance of Us
Male infertility affects approximately one-third of couples who are unable to conceive . Exposing mammalian spermatogenesis to elevated temperatures causes 40% of primary male infertility cases; however, the mechanisms behind this heat-induced male-specific infertility are largely unknown . Similar to mammals, Caenorhabditis elegans also display heat-induced sperm-specific infertility . Following heat-stress, C . elegans spermatocytes have increases in DNA damage that correlate with a premature loss of chromosome structures essential for meiotic chromosome segregation . Using live imaging, I will examine the dynamic relationship between this heat-induced DNA-damage and disassembly of meiotic chromosome structures in spermatocytes . To circumvent immobilization issues with existing current live imaging techniques, I am developing and implementing a new conditional, immobilization method for live imaging fluorescently tagged proteins in both sexes of intact worms . This novel method utilizes the auxin-inducible degron system, which targets degradation of degron tagged proteins in the presence of auxin, and thus can be used to specifically degrade genes that cause severe paralysis . Based on the gene location and predicted function, I selected three genes to degron tag (unc-104, unc-52, unc-18) . Using fertility assays, I confirmed that loss of these three gene products does not interfere with meiosis or fertility . Overall, this novel live imaging system will allow for conditional paralysis of living worms during live imaging experiments, enabling us to examine the dynamics of the heat-induced defects during spermatogenesis .