The microRNA miR-124 controls gene expression in the sensory nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans

We generated animals carrying a genomically integrated mir-124 promoter::gfp transgene and identified mir-124 promoter::GFP labelled cells as a subset of the C. elegans sensory neurons. We used fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) to isolate four distinct cell populations: mir-124 expressing (GFP+) and non-expressing (GFP-) cells from both wild-type and mutant animals. RNA samples obtained from the four cell populations were used for Affymetrix gene expression analysis to study the effect of mir-124 deletion on the transcriptome of mir-124 expressing (GFP+) and non-expressing (GFP-) cells.