L14-18 Flashcards
why study drosophila malanogaster
- rapid life cycle (10 days)
- easy to obtain mutants
- ~100 years of accumulated knowlage and tools
- inexpensive
- sequenced genome
-drosophila has XY sex determination - small number of chromosomes
what/when is the drosophila malanogaster not undergo meiotic recombination
- chromosome 4
- males
what is a hypomorphic mutation (example)
- partial loss of function
- white apricot mutation causes orange coloured fly eyes
what is an amorphic mutation (example)
- complete loss of function
- white mutation in flies leads to no pigmentation
- notch causes wing abnormalities, needs two copies of wild type for wild type phenotype (dosage effect)
what is an antimorphic mutation
- when duplications are put in there is still not a complete wild type phenotype
- negative activity
- e.g. ebony, interferes with wild type protein function via interaction with mutant protein and wild type protein (implies wild type is a polymer protein
how does an antimorphic mutation work
- anitmorphic alleles act as dominant negatives by competing with and reducing the activity of wild type gene products
- nonsense mutations results in expression of trucated protien, competes with wild type for binding to substrate 1 but cannot bind substrate 2. overexpress a dominant negative muatnt form
what is a hypermorphic mutation
- gain of function
- elipse isgain of function mutation in the drosophila EGF receptor which results in increased singalling, dominant, icreased activity however disrupts eye, gain of function as deficiency restores eye
what types of mutagenesis can occur
- alkylating agent (induces point mutation, very efficient)
- radiation (induces chromosomal rearangement, deletions of varying sizes, inversions, translocations, less efficient mutagen, easier to map location than point mutations)
- pelements (transposons, induce insertion mutaions, low frequency and non random, very easy to map insertion site, large and growing collections of single P-element, insertion lines available
how do alkylating agents work
EMS replaces hydrogen bond in guanine, alkylates oxygen, changes the hydorgen bonding pattern from a 4 bond to a 2 bond and changes the partner to which this base will interact with in the double helix
what is the most used transposon in drosphila
p element
what is the cellular blastoderm cell differentialted into
- pole cells (primordial germ cells)
- 6000 somatic cells
what are the problems of genetic screening
- most mutations are recessive
- many mutations are lethal so you can only recognise the phenotype when the fly is already dead
how to screen recessive lethal mutations and maintain fly stock
- hit male flies with a mutagen
- cross to wild type females (diploid progeny will be heterozygous)
- cross individual f1 males to wild type females
- self cross f2 progeny and identify those carrying lethal mutations (cannot destinguish +/+ from +/-
- to distinguish we use a mutant marker in mutant, i.e. eye/ body colour
what is needed to identify a lethal recessive mutation during recombination
a balancer chromosome
- heavily mutated chromosome from female f1
- chromosome cannot lineup with partner due to structural differences
- supresses genetic recombination
what is an example of a balancer chromosome in action
- a CyO (carries Cy,cn mutations)
- screen will end up with a with a-/CyO, Cy,cn (where a- is lethal)
- crossing them together
- creates two lethal a-/a- and CyO/CyO
- one viable Cy phenotype a-/Cyo,Cy/cn
what are the maternal effect mutations
zygotic mutants
- gap genes
- pair rule genes
- segment polarity genes
- homeotic genes
what is an example of maternal effect gene
bicoid
- female bicoid appears normal (bicoid-/bicoid-)
- male is missing head and thoracic structures (bicoid-/+)
- if some anterior/posterior cytoplasm is replased then tail/head will form
- bicoid gene is from mother
what occurs to the drosophila egg cells during formation
- germ line has 16 eggs but only 1 becomes the oocyte, the rest are nurse cells
- nurse cells form cytoplasmic bridges that feed in mRNA and the bicoid gene
- diffusion of bicoid mRNA is restricted by binding to the cytoskeleton, (causes concentration gradient at anterior end)
- nuclei along A-P exis exposed to varyung bicoid conc.
- bicoid is a transcription factor, able to read position due to diff in conc of biciod
- in humans nucleation in first cell