Investigating the Role of FBF-1 in Somatic RNAi Inheritance in C. elegans

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in eukaryotes in which gene suppression is initiated by the presence of short, double-stranded RNA in a cell’s cytoplasm. This is a conserved process that likely evolved primarily to mediate resistance to pathogens. It is also an incredibly useful tool in experimental biology, due to its stability, specificity, and relative ease of use in targeted gene expression modification. In Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), the effects of RNAi are heritable and systemic, making it an ideal model organism for studying transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. FBF-1 is a member of the PUF protein family, which are highly conserved RNA-binding proteins that play a role in post-transcriptional gene expression regulation, including mRNA stability and translation. We previously observed that FBF-1 plays a role in the inheritance of RNAi response to targets expressed in C. elegans reproductive cells. However, it is unclear whether it impacts the inheritance of RNAi against somatically expressed genes. Knockdown of the dpy-11collagen gene results in noticeable morphological changes in affected C. elegans, shortened body length being the most notable. By measuring differences in body length across generations of control and fbf-1 mutant worms, both with RNAi-induced dpy-11 suppression, we are able to observe the potential effects of FBF-1 in RNAi inheritance. This study may provide further insight into the mechanisms regulating RNAi inheritance in C. elegans.