>Subject: EDRC99 - abstract ID163
>author: Davies, J.A.
>
>Dear Dr. Davies,
>
>We are currently curating the abstracts for the upcoming European
>Drosophila Research Conference in Zurich, for FlyBase. I am writing in
>connection with your abstract:
>
>'Two Drosophila innexins co-operate to form heteromeric gap junction
>channels'
>
>You mention 2 innexin genes that are new to FlyBase, Ix2 and Ix3.
>
>Do you have a map location for Ix2 and Ix3? It is nice if we can keep
>as many gene records as possible anchored to the map.
>
>Also, are these two genes different from shakB (at 19E) and ogre (at
>6E), which are also innexins ?
>
>Thank you for your help,
>
>with best wishes,
>
>Chihiro
Dear Chihiro
1. We have decided not to use the suffix ix to designate these genes, but
to use inx instead. There have been a couple of recent publications that
use this abbreviation and this is what the worm people do, too. The genes
are now inx2 and inx3.
2. They are different from shak and ogre. inx2 is the same as prp33 (Curtin
et al; Gene 232: 191-201.) We have used the nomenclature inx2 for this gene
because the nomenclature is getting confusing as more members of this gene
family are being discovered and for the reasons below:
Ganforina et al (1999) have recently presented a Schistocerca americana
protein, Sa-Inx(1), which is an orthologue of Drosophila Ogre. In the light
of this, Dm-Inx1 must now be considered as an alternative nomenclature for
Ogre. Additionally, Ganfornina et al have identified another grasshopper
innexin, Sa-Inx(2). Subsequently, Curtin et al (1999) isolated a gene
encoding its Drosophila orthologue (prp33). However, a partial sequence
corresponding to this Drosophila gene had already been deposited in the
BDGP EST database and it was from here that we obtained the cDNA clone for
inx2. To keep the nomenclature congruent with other organisms and to ease
cross-species comparisons, we decided that inx2 was the best nomenclature
for this gene. inx3 which was also identified in the BDGP database has no
known orthologues in other organisms.
I'm sure that this is more detail than you want, but we are anxious to
prevent the gratuitous proliferation of duplicate and confusing names for
these loci, and it seems to us the best way is to put in place a logical
system of nomenclature ASAP. This is discuseed in our forthcoming paper (J.
Cell Biol., in press) and has been touched on in our TIGS review (TIGS 14:
348-349, 1998)
3. The locations are:
inx2 - 6E4-5. This maps to cosmid 17F90
inx3 - 98E4-6. The P1 clones DS03216 & DS04968 contain inx3
The genes and their characterisation are described in Stebbings et al., J.
Cell Biol. in press.
Please get in touch if you need any more information
Yours,
Jane Davies
Dr Jane Davies
Sussex Centre for Neuroscience
Sussex University
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QG
UK