C. elegans fer-1 mutant gene expression profile

In vertebrate muscle, loss of Dysferlin results in the activation of compensatory muscle gene expression, even at pre-pathological stages. We hypothesized that if C. elegans fer-1 is also expressed in muscle, then fer-1 mutant worms might also exhibit compensatory muscle gene expression. To test this hypothesis, we used Affymetrix microarrays to profile gene expression from synchronized wild type and fer-1 mutant adults. To improve the specificity of this approach, we profiled two well characterized loss-of-function fer-1 mutants (hc1ts and hc24ts) and considered genes that changed similarly in both mutants as fer-1-regulated transcripts.