Worm bagging participant Caenorhabditis elegans
Worm bagging (also referred to as facultative vivipary or endotokia matricida) is a form of vivipary observed in nematodes, namely Caenorhabditis elegans. The process is characterized by eggs hatching within the parent and the larvae proceeding to consume and emerge from the parent.History
While the phenomenon was mentioned as a result of fluorodeoxyuridine treatment as early as 1979 and egg-laying mutants were identified in 1984, the natural circumstances and mechanisms resulting in this behavior were not fully explored until 2003. From this point, modest explorations of the mechanisms underlying this behavior have been observed.Proximate causes
Bagging will occur in vulvaless or egg-laying mutants of C. elegans but can also be induced in wild-type strains. Identified stressors that can induce bagging are starvation, high salt concentration, and antagonistic bacteria.It has been observed in larval development, that the WRT-5 protein is secreted into the pharyngeal lumen and the pharyngeal expression changes in a cycle that is connected to the molting cycle. Deletion mutations in wrt-5 cause embryonic lethality, which are temperature sensitive and more severe at 15 degrees C than at 25 degrees C. Additionally, Animals that hatch exhibit variable abnormal morphology, for example, bagging worms, blistering, molting defects, or Roller phenotypes.Internal hatching is initiated by genes and is not restricted to the widely used laboratory strain N2. Internal hatching is rare when worms are maintained under standard laboratory conditions. However, axenic condition which is a transfer from solid to liquid medium along with adverse environmental conditions, such as starvation, exposure to harsh compounds, and bacteria can increase the frequency of worm bags.In a study C. elegans were starved and in stressful conditions such as a high salt environment. As a result there was a connection drawn between the pathway leading to the dauer stage and the pathway leading to bagging. Bagging was seen to be induced under stress, and was reversible if worms were relieved of the stress before internal larvae caused too much damage to the adult. Also, there was evidence of larvae developing in the adult and consuming parent body contents prior to emerging from the parent body.
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