Gruber, S., Houtman, A., Reisert, H., Amini, M., Fiore, C., Gonzalez, P., Han, V., Jazic, A., Kusupholnand, M., Miller, M., Nam, J., Wang, Z., Yu, Y., Dong, P., Oak, A.S.W., Sharma, A., Spana, E.P. (2025). The tilt (tt) mutation of Drosophila melanogaster maps to the cis-regulatory region of the Iroquois Complex (Iro-C) located in the sosondowah (sowah) gene.  MicroPubl Biol 2025(): .

FBrf0263039

Research paper

The tilt (tt) mutation first described by Morgan and Bridges in 1915 has adult visible phenotypes in wing posture and vein formation. We have mapped tt to a genomic region within the sosondowah (sowah) gene that houses the cis-regulatory elements that control expression of the Iroquois Complex genes araucan (ara) and caup olican (caup) in the wing hinge and wing veins. Sequence analysis of the tt[1] allele has identified a gtwin retrotransposon containing su(Hw) insulator binding sites within this region of sowah . We find that mutations in su(Hw) suppress the tilt phenotype, providing a potential mechanism for the insertion to affect the function of the Iroquois Complex.

PMC12311624 (PMC) (EuropePMC)