Tsuneyuki Yamazaki

Evolution of the LINE-like I element in the Drosophila melanogaster species subgroup

LINE-like retrotransposons, the so-called I elements, control the system of I-R (inducer-reactive) hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila melanogaster. I elements are present in many Drosophila species. It has been suggested that active, complete I elements, located at different sites on the chromosomes, invaded natural populations of D. melanogaster recently (1920–1970). But old strains lacking active I elements have only defective I elements located in the chromocenter. We have cloned I elements from D. melanogaster and the melanogaster subgroup. In D. melanogaster, the nucleotide sequences of chromocentral I elements differed from those on chromosome arms by as much as 7%. All the I elements of D. mauritiana and D. sechellia are more closely related to the chromosomal I elements of D. melanogaster than to the chromocentral I elements in any species. No sequence difference was observed in the surveyed region between two chromosomal I elements isolated from D. melanogaster and one from D. simulans. These findings strongly support the idea that the defective chromocentral I elements of D. melanogaster originated before the species diverged and the chromosomal I elements were eliminated. The chromosomal I elements reinvaded natural populations of D. melanogaster recently, and were possibly introduced from D. simulans by horizontal transmission.

Molecular analysis of the intergenic region of the duplicated amy genes of drosophila melanogaster and drosophila teissieri

The intergenic regions between the duplicated amylase coding regions (Amy) of D. melanogaster and D. teissieri were sequenced. Their lengths in D. melanogaster and D. teissieri were 4,536 bp and 4,621 bp, respectively. Since homology between the upstream regions of the two duplicated genes was found up to 450 bp from the initiation codon of the Amy genes, the ancestral Amy coding region duplicated together with at least 450 bp of the 5′-flanking region as one unit. Comparison of the regions between the two species revealed that the level of divergence was very heterogeneous. Although the mean level of the nucleotide difference in this region was 0.107, no nucleotide substitution was found in four subregions whose sizes were more than 100 bp. Since the probability of these four subregions being completely conserved between D. melanogaster and D. teissieri was very low, these subregions were considered to have relatively important roles in evolution. Large insertions and deletions were not observed in this region but small ones were observed all over the region except for an about 1-kb subregion. This 1-kb region corresponded to an open reading frame encoding a protein which had some sequence identity with the proteins of the serine protease inhibitor superfamily (serpin). Since we could find a transcript of this gene and the synonymous substitution rate was higher than the replacement substitution rate, we suggest that this gene encodes an active serpin in Drosophila.

THE MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF BROWN EYE COLOR MUTATIONS ISOLATED FROM GEOGRAPHICALLY DISCRETE POPULATIONS OF DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

A large proportion of spontaneous mutations inDrosophila melanogaster strains of laboratory origin are associated with insertions of mobile DNA elements. As a first step toward determining whether spontaneous laboratory mutations are predictive for mutational events occurring in the wild, recessivebrown (bw) eye color mutants were isolated. By inbreeding the progeny of wild-caughtDrosophila melanogaster females,bw mutations were isolated from seven separate geographic sites distributed among Japan, California, Siberia and Hungary. Among a total of 14 mutations studied, no case of transposon mutagenesis was found. At least 4 mutations are associated with small deletions in thebw gene. The remainder are inseparable from wild-typebw by Southern analysis and are presumed to be basepair changes or very small indels. Although only two spontaneousbw mutants of laboratory origin have been analyzed molecularly, one is a mobile element insertion.

Genetic factors on the second and third chromosomes responsible for the variation of amylase activity and inducibility in Drosophila melanogaster.

Using second- or third-chromosome substitution lines of Drosophila melanogaster, the genetic variation of inducibility and amylase specific activities in three media (starch, normal and glucose) were investigated. Genetic factors on both the second and third chromosomes were responsible for the variation in amylase specific activity and inducibility. In glucose medium, the genetic variance of amylase specific activity estimated for the second-chromosome substitution lines was larger than that for the third-chromosome substitution lines; however, for starch medium and inducibility, the variance was larger for the third-chromosome substitution lines. High correlations for the second-chromosome substitution lines and low correlations for the third-chromosome substitution lines were observed for amylase specific activities in different media. These results suggest that the genetic factor(s) responsible for inducibility or amylase activity variation in an induced medium such as starch should be on the third chromosome and those in the non-induced medium such as glucose should be on the second chromosome. The functional roles of the factors on the second and third chromosomes would be the repression and induction of amylase, respectively.