A high-throughput screen identifies RNA Binding Proteins that affect fertility in C. elegans and reveals a functional relationship between ADR-2 and SQD-1

A high-throughput screen was performed to identify RNA binding proteins that impact fertility in Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites. This screen makes use of animals expressing a vitellogenin (yolk protein) fusion with GFP, in a background (adr-2(-)) that corrects for a previously identified fertility defect in this strain. In addition to identifying several RNA binding proteins that regulate fertility, the screen also uncovered an interaction between the RNA binding proteins adr-2 and sqd-1, which were found to coregulate many transcripts important for fertility. N2 (wildtype) and adr-2(-) animals were hatched and grown for 60 hours on ctrl (empty vector) RNAi or sqd-1 RNAi. Young adult worms were collected and total RNA was isolated from these samples. RNA was poly-A selected before proceeding with library preparation.