Fig. 7. Germline defects in mat-1 hermaphrodites. Animals were shifted from 15°C to 25°C as L1 larvae and prepared for whole-mount DAPI staining as young adults. Images show one arm of a bilobed gonad (A,C), one arm plus the entire uterus (B), or the entire gonad (D,E). Oocytes can be identified by their diakinetic chromosomes (white arrows). In wild-type hermaphrodites (A), the gonad extends and reflexes so that the distal tips lie dorsally (gray arrowhead; distal tip is out of the plane of focus) over the vulva. Wild-type sperm with their highly condensed, haploid nuclei can be seen in the upper regions of the spermatheca (white arrowhead). Left of the spermatheca, a meiotic one-cell embryo (asterisk) and progressively older embryos lie within the uterus (white line). (B) A non-sterile, ax212 hermaphrodite in which the distal tips overlap (gray arrowhead). The mutant sperm lack DNA (spermatheca; white arrowhead), and the uterus (white line) contains a mixture of viable and dead embryos. (C) In ax227 hermaphrodites, the gonad is only slightly shorter than wild type but excess metaphase nuclei can be seen in the distal region of the gonad (C'; black arrow). The uterus contains only meiotic one-cell embryos (C; asterisks). In ax144 and ax520, the gonad is significantly reduced (D) and amorphous (E) germlines lack both oocytes and sperm.