Mutations affecting the chemosensory neurons of Caenorhabditis elegans.

We have identified and characterized 95 mutations that reduce or abolish dye filling of amphid and phasmid neurons and that have little effect on viability, fertility or movement. Twenty-seven mutations occurred spontaneously in strains with a high frequency of transposon insertion. Sixty-eight were isolated after treatment with EMS. All of the mutations result in defects in one or more chemosensory responses, such as chemotaxis to ammonium chloride or formation of dauer larvae under conditions of starvation and overcrowding. Seventy-five of the mutations are alleles of 12 previously defined genes, mutations which were previously shown to lead to defects in amphid ultrastructure. We have assigned 20 mutations to 13 new genes, called dyf-1 through dyf-13. We expect that the genes represented by dye-filing defective mutants are important for the differentiation of amphid and phasmid chemosensilla.