Subject: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10426
Dear John,
We are currently curating the abstracts for the upcoming 42nd
(Washington, D.C.) Annual Drosophila Research Conference, for FlyBase.
I am writing in connection with your abstract:
'Molecular characterization of teflon, a gene required for maintenance of
autosomal pairing at meiosis I in male Drosophila melanogaster.'
You mention a gene that is new to FlyBase, teflon. Do you know which
of the Genome Project CG annotations your gene corresponds to? All the
CGs have corresponding gene records in FlyBase already and we don't
like to make duplicate records for what is actually the same gene
unless we can't avoid it. If your gene does not correspond to a CG
then perhaps you could tell me its map location, as this is valuable
information for the genome annotation project. I wonder whether the
gene we have in FlyBase as mei-S8 (FBgn0002713) might be the same thing
as teflon \- you will certainly know, judging from the publications for
mei-S8.
Thank you for your help,
with best wishes,
Rachel.
Subject: Re: Helping FlyBase: ADRC-10426
Dear Rachel:
The teflon gene corresponds to CG8961. We hope to be publishing a
detailed molecular characterization of the mutants within the next few
months \- I can send you a preprint when its ready if it will help with the
annotation.
The teflon mutatns very likely identify the same gene as the meiS8
mutants, but since there are no longer any alleles of meiS8 in existance it
was impossible to test by complementation. Both mutations map to
approximately 80.0 on 2R. The reported phenotype for meiS8 is similar to
that of teflon in that both mutations cause high rates of fourth chromosome
nondisjunction in male meiosis and are male-specific. The teflon mutations
also cause nondisjunction of the major autosomes. This was not observed for
meiS8, but was not specifically tested genetically. The reported
cytological examination of mei-S8 describes 4th chromosome nd but not major
autosome nd. Since in teflon, the meiotic phenotype is quite striking, this
suggests that the teflon mutants may differ from meiS8 in this respect.
However, the original cytological description suggest that the observations
were cursory and not very thorough. Another argument that tef and meiS8 are
the same is that 5 alleles of tef came out of the Zuker lab screen, but no
other mutations with a similar phenotype were found. In short, my guess is
that tef and meiS8 identify the same gene, but we'll never know for sure.
I hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Asst. Professor
Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics
Wayne State University
BSB 5117
Detroit, MI
313-577-1976
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