Figure 4.

ERCC-1, XPF-1, XPG-1 and XPA-1 protect against replicative decline. (a and b) show the survival of successive generations of wild-type and mutant populations if, in each generation, one animal is passaged. Mutant ercc-1, xpf-1 and xpg-1 strains (in A), and to a lower extent, xpa-1 (in B), lose viability in time. The graphs depict cumulative results from multiple experiments at 25 °C. The number of generations (x-axis) is plotted against the surviving percentage. For explanation of the assay and a representative experiment, see Supplementary Figure S3