Genome wide expression analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans cdk-8(tm1238) null mutants (vs. WT N2 worms)

CDK-8 is the catalytic subunit of the Mediator complex and is known to regulate specific gene programs in yeast and in cultured mammalian cells; because no study has yet identified CDK-8 regulated genes in an in vivo animal model, we performed genome wide expression profiling on cdk-8 null mutant C. elegans worms to identify CDK-8 regulated genes and developmental and/or physiological gene programs. We grew developmentally synchronized wild-type and mutant worms to the L4 larval stage and harvested them for RNA extraction. L4 was chosen to avoid contamination from embryonic mRNA present in adult worms and to allow best comparison to previous Mediator subunit expression profiling done at the same stage (GSE9720ID).