38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology

The genomic sequence of the entomopathogenic nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora is on the way. The biological meaning will be elucidated by functional genomics based on available sequence information, and the genetics of the organism. We elaborated a system for getting reproducible results of genetic and functional genomic analyses in H. bacteriophora. We established: (i) a solid media (ENGM) on which H. bacteriophora could be propagated and handled individually; (ii) mutants (NS107, HU1956) of Photorhabdus luminescens TT01, which do not overgrow the nematodes; (iii) Inbred lines of TT01 and GSP11 nematodes; (iv) a transformation protocol for P. luminescens TT01 and transformed our mutants with color markers; (v) a system for studying RNAi activity of C. elegans genes cloned in pL4440. We induced dpy-3 RNAi phenocopies in H. bacteriophora by feeding. We work on isolating rnc(-) mutant of P. luminescens TT01 HU1956 and NS107 strains to increase the frequency of RNAi by using rnc(-) mutants. Primers were designed for the Tc1 transposase of C. elegans.