Figure 4.—

The unc-82 gene encodes a predicted serine/threonine kinase and produces multiple alternatively spliced messages. (A) Schematic of the 600-kb region containing unc-82 as defined by SNP mapping, which placed unc-82 to the left of marker F55G1:23412. Within this interval, both (A) the cosmid B0496 and (B) an 18-kb PCR fragment containing B0496.3 rescue unc-82(e1323). (B) The solid black line represents the introns and 2.6 kb of upstream sequence. Yellow rectangles indicate regions targeted in RNA interference experiments. Point mutations found in e1323 and e1220 are shown. (B and C) Rectangles represent exons: magenta denotes alternatively spliced exons, green marks exons with alternatively spliced borders, and blue shows the kinase domain. (C) The B0496.3 gene structure was determined by sequencing cDNAs and a 5′ PCR product. unc-82 has at least nine alternatively included exons that can exist in numerous combinations. Bar, 1 kb.