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3 Janelia Publications

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    09/11/12 | Ultrabithorax confers spatial identity in a context-specific manner in the Drosophila postembryonic ventral nervous system.
    Marin EC, Dry KE, Alaimo DR, Rudd KT, Cillo AR, Clenshaw ME, Negre N, White KP, Truman JW
    Neural Development. 2012 Sep 11;7:31. doi: 10.1186/1749-8104-7-31

    BACKGROUND: In holometabolous insects such as Drosophila melanogaster, neuroblasts produce an initial population of diverse neurons during embryogenesis and a much larger set of adult-specific neurons during larval life. In the ventral CNS, many of these secondary neuronal lineages differ significantly from one body segment to another, suggesting a role for anteroposterior patterning genes. RESULTS: Here we systematically characterize the expression pattern and function of the Hox gene Ultrabithorax (Ubx) in all 25 postembryonic lineages. We find that Ubx is expressed in a segment-, lineage-, and hemilineage-specific manner in the thoracic and anterior abdominal segments. When Ubx is removed from neuroblasts via mitotic recombination, neurons in these segments exhibit the morphologies and survival patterns of their anterior thoracic counterparts. Conversely, when Ubx is ectopically expressed in anterior thoracic segments, neurons exhibit complementary posterior transformation phenotypes. CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrate that Ubx plays a critical role in conferring segment-appropriate morphology and survival on individual neurons in the adult-specific ventral CNS. Moreover, while always conferring spatial identity in some sense, Ubx has been co-opted during evolution for distinct and even opposite functions in different neuronal hemilineages.

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    05/29/12 | Transvection is common throughout the Drosophila genome.
    Mellert DJ, Truman JW
    Genetics. 2012 May 29;191(4):1129-41. doi: 10.1534/genetics.112.140475

    Higher-order genome organization plays an important role in transcriptional regulation. In Drosophila, somatic pairing of homologous chromosomes can lead to transvection, by which the regulatory region of a gene can influence transcription in trans. We observe transvection between transgenes inserted at commonly used phiC31 integration sites in the Drosophila genome. When two transgenes that carry endogenous regulatory elements driving the expression of either LexA or GAL4 are inserted at the same integration site and paired, the enhancer of one transgene can drive or repress expression of the paired transgene. These transvection effects depend on compatibility between regulatory elements and are often restricted to a subset of cell types within a given expression pattern. We further show that activated UAS-transgenes can also drive transcription in trans. We discuss the implication of these findings for 1) understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie transvection and 2) the design of experiments that utilize site-specific integration.

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    04/09/12 | Using translational enhancers to increase transgene expression in Drosophila.
    Pfeiffer BD, Truman JW, Rubin GM
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2012 Apr 9;109(17):6626-31. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1204520109

    The ability to specify the expression levels of exogenous genes inserted in the genomes of transgenic animals is critical for the success of a wide variety of experimental manipulations. Protein production can be regulated at the level of transcription, mRNA transport, mRNA half-life, or translation efficiency. In this report, we show that several well-characterized sequence elements derived from plant and insect viruses are able to function in Drosophila to increase the apparent translational efficiency of mRNAs by as much as 20-fold. These increases render expression levels sufficient for genetic constructs previously requiring multiple copies to be effective in single copy, including constructs expressing the temperature-sensitive inactivator of neuronal function Shibire(ts1), and for the use of cytoplasmic GFP to image the fine processes of neurons.

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