Shandala T, Kortschak R D, Gregory S, Saint R
Department of Genetics, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia.
Development. 1999 Oct;126(19):4341-9. doi: 10.1242/dev.126.19.4341.
The dead ringer (dri) gene of Drosophila melanogaster is a member of the recently discovered ARID-box family of eukaryotic genes that encode proteins with a conserved DNA binding domain. dri itself is highly conserved, with specific orthologs in the human, mouse, zebrafish and C. elegans genomes. We have generated dri mutant alleles to show that dri is essential for anterior-posterior patterning and for muscle development in the embryo. Consistent with the mutant phenotype and the sequence-specific DNA-binding properties of its product, dri was found to be essential for the normal early embryonic expression pattern of several key regulatory genes. In dri mutant embryos, expression of argos in the terminal domains was severely reduced, accounting for the dri mutant head phenotype. Conversely, buttonhead expression was found to be deregulated in the trunk region, accounting for the appearance of ectopic cephalic furrows. Curiously, dri was found also to be required for maintenance of expression of the ventrolateral region of even-skipped stripe four. This study establishes dri as an essential co-factor in the regulated expression of specific patterning genes during early embryogenesis.
黑腹果蝇的“酷似者”（dri）基因是最近发现的真核基因ARID-box家族的成员，该家族编码具有保守DNA结合结构域的蛋白质。dri本身高度保守，在人类、小鼠、斑马鱼和秀丽隐杆线虫基因组中有特定的直系同源基因。我们已经产生了dri突变等位基因，以表明dri对于胚胎的前后模式形成和肌肉发育至关重要。与突变表型及其产物的序列特异性DNA结合特性一致，发现dri对于几个关键调控基因的正常早期胚胎表达模式至关重要。在dri突变胚胎中，末端区域中argos的表达严重降低，这解释了dri突变体的头部表型。相反，发现纽扣头在躯干区域的表达失调，这解释了异位头沟的出现。奇怪的是，还发现dri对于维持偶数跳动条纹四腹侧区域的表达是必需的。这项研究确定dri是早期胚胎发育过程中特定模式基因调控表达的必需辅助因子。
