RNAi Treatment of <i>elo-5</i> Causes L1 Arrest and Other Physiological Defects

<div><p>(A–C) Nomarski images of worms grown from eggs placed on RNAi plates. Scale bars, 100 μm.</p> <p>(A) Young adults had normal morphology and growth rates.</p> <p>(B) On the second day of adulthood, these animals displayed an egg-laying defect; eggs hatched inside the worms. Arrows point to the late embryos and hatched larvae inside a worm.</p> <p>(C) F1 generation arrested uniformly at the first larval stage (L1), and larvae arrested for 4–5 d died.</p> <p>(D–F) Images of worms derived from late larvae (L2–L4) placed on the RNAi plates.</p> <p>(D) The F1 progeny of worms developed from the treated larvae had smaller size and a scrawny morphology compared to the wild type shown in (A). Scale bar, 100 μm.</p> <p>(E) These animals produced very few oocytes, some of which gave rise to embryos and L1 worms. White arrows indicate embryos. Some oocytes remained unfertilized (black arrow). Scale bar, 10 μm.</p> <p>(F) The proximal part of the gonads undergoes deterioration resulting in sterility. The white arrow indicates spermatica, the black arrow shows an abnormally amorphous oocyte, and the two-way arrow points to the clumsy gonad arm that is finely ordered in wild-type animals. Scale bar, 10 μm.</p>