Knockout of <i>bcl-7</i> inhibits normal seam cell development in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans.</i>

<p><b>A</b>: Structure of <i>bcl-7</i>. Black boxes, exons; bent lines, introns. The region deleted in the strain <i>tm5268</i> is shown as a dotted line, below. The numbers indicate the location in the cosmid <i>C28H8</i>. <b>B–D</b>: Nomarski images of adult hermaphrodites. A wild-type hermaphrodite had complete alae (the region between arrows) (<b>B</b>); Alae were incomplete in <i>bcl-7</i> (<i>tm5268</i>) hermaphrodites. A region between dotted arrows indicates partial alae with only two ridges. The area without arrows indicates regions without alae (<b>C</b>); a transgenic rescue line carrying <i>Pbcl-7::bcl-7::egfp</i> reporters (<i>tm5268;tmEx2966</i>) with complete alae (three ridges) (<b>D</b>). <b>E–J</b>: Examples of SCM::GFP localization in wild-type, <i>tm5268</i>, and <i>tm5268;tmEx3496</i> hermaphrodites with <i>wIs51</i> (SCM::GFP). <i>tm5268;tmEx3496</i> is a transgenic rescue line carrying <i>Pbcl-7::bcl-7::mCherry</i> reporters. A wild-type L4 hermaphrodite expressing SCM::GFP in 16 seam cell nuclei (<b>E</b>), <i>tm5268</i> hermaphrodites carrying <i>scm::gfp</i> reporters (<b>H</b>–<b>G</b>), and a <i>tm5268;tmEx3496</i> hermaphrodite carrying <i>scm::gfp</i> reporters (<b>J</b>). Inserts show the Nomarski images of the same animals of the fluorescence images. <b>K</b>: Bar chart showing the average number of seam cells (about the worms at each larval stage, except for the middle L2 stage, and the young adult stage) or daughter cells (about the worms at middle L2 stage) expressing GFP in wild-type and <i>tm5268</i> hermaphrodites (n = 21–46). <b>L</b>: Percentages of worms with complete alae in wild-type, <i>tm5268</i>, and <i>tm5268;tmEx2966</i> adult hermaphrodites (n = 20–30). <b>M</b>: Bar chart showing the average number of seam cells expressing GFP in wild-type, <i>tm5268</i>, <i>tm5268;tmEx3496</i>, and <i>tm5268;tmEx4126[SCMp::bcl-7, SCMp::mCherry]</i> adult hermaphrodites with <i>wIs51</i> (SCM::GFP) (n = 15–23). Error bars indicate the standard error of the mean (SEM). Asterisks indicate statistical significance compared with each other. *p<0.05. **p<0.005. ***p<0.001. N.S.: no significance. Scale bar = 25 µm.