FIG. 4.

Use of real-time RT-PCR to measure antimicrobial RNA in immune pathway mutant nematodes. The indicated nematode strains were prepared and collected. RNA was purified from each strain, and antimicrobial gene expression was assayed by real-time RT-PCR using mlc-1 to normalize RNA concentration. Expression was measured relative to the wild-type strain N2, which was grown in parallel. Depicted on the graph are the means of three independent experiments. Panel A depicts two different mutant variants of nsy-1 animals compared to the wild type. Panel B depicts tir-1, panel C dbl-1, and panel D daf-16. Expression levels that were significantly different from the wild type (P < 0.05) are indicated with an asterisk (P values were calculated using one-sample t tests). As indicated by the arrowheads in panel C, expression of abf-3 (432% and 329% in wk70 and nk3 alleles, respectively) and F55G11.7 (311% and 565% in wk70 and nk3 alleles, respectively) was off scale in this figure.