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Codon adaptation–based control of protein expression in C. elegans

Nature Methods volume 8, pages 250–252 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

We present a method to control protein levels under native genetic regulation in Caenorhabditis elegans by using synthetic genes with adapted codons. We found that the force acting on the spindle in C. elegans embryos was related to the amount of the G-protein regulator GPR-1/2. Codon-adapted versions of any C. elegans gene can be designed using our web tool, C. elegans codon adapter.

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Figure 1: Codon-adaptation of the gpr-1 gene determines the amount of YFP–GPR-1 protein.
Figure 2: Increasing GPR-1 amounts causes an increase in force acting on the mitotic spindle.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Busch, M. Decker, N. Goehring and Z. Maliga for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

    Stefanie Redemann, Susanne Ernst, Andrey Pozniakowsky, Swathi Ayloo & Antony A Hyman

  2. European Molecular Biology Laboratory Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Siegfried Schloissnig

  3. Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany

    Henrik Bringmann

Authors
  1. Stefanie Redemann
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  2. Siegfried Schloissnig
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  3. Susanne Ernst
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  4. Andrey Pozniakowsky
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  5. Swathi Ayloo
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  6. Antony A Hyman
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  7. Henrik Bringmann
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Contributions

S.R. characterized all strains. S.S. wrote the web tool algorithm and analyzed genome-wide CAI. S.E. bombarded all constructs. A.P. cloned constructs. S.A. filmed embryos. A.A.H. mentored and financed the project. S.R., A.A.H. and H.B. wrote the paper. H.B. conceived the general synthetic gene design, cloned gpr-1 constructs and preliminarily characterized gpr-1 strains.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henrik Bringmann.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–8 and Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 4445 kb)

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Redemann, S., Schloissnig, S., Ernst, S. et al. Codon adaptation–based control of protein expression in C. elegans. Nat Methods 8, 250–252 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1565

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