Establishment of tightly controllable expression systems for the model organism C. elegans

The nematode C. elegans is a well investigated model organism with many advantages. Unfortunatly, until now no well controllable gene expression systems are available.

To solve this issue, the Tetracycline activatable Tet-on expression system was adapted for the use in C. elegans to allow both spatially and temporally controlled gene expression at the same time. Furthermore, the Tet-on system will be combined with the SnAvi-tag – a tandem tag for protein purification. This combination should allow to specifically purify a protein of interest with its complex partners from a specific tissue of C. elegans at defined time points.