Transcripts of one of two Drosophila cyclin genes become localized in pole cells during embryogenesis.

Cyclins, originally discovered in the eggs of marine invertebrates, are proteins which undergo dramatic cycles of synthesis followed by degradation at the metaphase-anaphase transition of cell division. That they participate in the G2-M transition is supported by the fact that when synthetic cyclin messenger RNAs from clam and sea urchin are microinjected into the G2-arrested oocytes of Xenopus, they induce maturation. The cyclin of fission yeast is the product of the cdc13 gene, which is known to interact with cdc2, a gene required for the entry into mitosis. We have cloned the genes that encode A-type and B-type cyclins from Drosophila melanogaster by virtue of their sequence similarity to oligonucleotides corresponding to conserved regions of the cyclin genes. We show that both genes encode abundant maternal mRNAs, but whereas the cyclin A mRNA is relatively uniformly distributed before cell formation, the cyclin B mRNA becomes localized to the developing pole cells. In larvae, cyclin A is expressed predominantly in brain and imaginal disks, whereas cyclin B transcripts are abundant in testes.