Genetic factors controlling white gene expression of the transposon A(R) 4-24 at a telomere in Drosophila melanogaster

Large-scale functional annotation and expanded implementations of the P{wHy} hybrid transposon in the Drosophila melanogaster genome

Whole genome sequencing of the model organisms has created increased demand for efficient tools to facilitate the genome annotation efforts. Accordingly, we report the further implementations and analyses stemming from our publicly available P{wHy} library for Drosophila melanogaster. A two-step regime-large scale transposon mutagenesis followed by hobo-induced nested deletions-allows mutation saturation and provides significant enhancements to existing genomic coverage. We previously showed that, for a given starting insert, deletion saturation is readily obtained over a 60-kb interval; here, we perform a breakdown analysis of efficiency to identify rate-limiting steps in the process. Transrecombination, the hobo-induced recombination between two P{wHy} half molecules, was shown to further expand the P{wHy} mutational range, pointing to a potent, iterative process of transrecombination-reconstitution-transrecombination for alternating between very large and very fine-grained deletions in a self-contained manner. A number of strains also showed partial or complete repression of P{wHy} markers, depending on chromosome location, whereby asymmetric marker silencing allowed continuous phenotypic detection, indicating that P{wHy}-based saturational mutagenesis should be useful for the study of heterochromatin/positional effects.

Mutations in Su(var)205 and Su(var)3-7 suppress P-element-dependent silencing in Drosophila melanogaster

In Drosophila melanogaster, the w(+) transgene in P[lacW]ci(Dplac) is uniformly expressed throughout the adult eye. However, when other P elements are present, this w(+) transgene is randomly silenced and this produces a variegated eye phenotype. This P-element-dependent silencing (PDS) is limited to w(+) transgenes inserted in a specific region on chromosome 4. In a screen for genetic modifiers of PDS, we isolated mutations in Su(var)205, Su(var)3-7, and two unidentified genes that suppress this variegated phenotype. Therefore, only a few of the genes encoding heterochromatic modifiers act dose dependently in PDS. In addition, we recovered two spontaneous mutations of P[lacW]ci(Dplac) that variegate in the absence of P elements. These P[lacW]i(Dplac) derivatives have a gypsy element inserted proximally to the P[lacW]ci(Dplac) insert. The same mutations that suppress PDS also suppress w(+) silencing from these P[lacW]ci(Dplac) derivative alleles. This indicates that both cis-acting changes in sequence and trans-acting P elements cause a similar change in chromatin structure that silences w(+) expression in P[lacW]ci(Dplac). Together, these results confirm that PDS occurs at P[lacW]ci(Dplac) because of the chromatin structure at this chromosomal position. Studying w(+) variegation from P[lacW]ci(Dplac) provides a model for the interactions that can enhance heterochromatic silencing at single P-element inserts.