A toolkit for tissue-specific protein degradation in C. elegans

Abstract

Proteins essential for embryo production, cell division, and early embryonic events are frequently re-utilized later in embryogenesis, during organismal development, or in the adult. Examining protein function across these different biological contexts requires tissue-specific perturbation. Here, we describe a method that utilizes expression of a fusion between a GFP-targeting nanobody and SOCS-box containing ubiquitin ligase adaptor to target GFP tagged proteins for degradation. When combined with endogenous locus GFP tagging by CRISPR-Cas9 or rescue of a null mutant with a GFP fusion, this approach enables routine and efficient tissue-specific protein ablation. We show that this approach works in multiple tissues--the epidermis, intestine, body wall muscle, sensory neurons, and touch neurons--where it recapitulates expected loss-of-function mutant phenotypes. The transgene toolkit and the strain set described here will complement existing approaches to enable routine analysis of the tissue-specific roles of C. elegans proteins.