DROSOPHILA INFORMATION NEWSLETTER Volume 18, April 1995 The Drosophila Information Newsletter has been established with the hope of providing a timely forum for informal communication among Drosophila workers. The Newsletter will be published quarterly and distributed electronically, free of charge. We will try to strike a balance between maximizing the useful information included and keeping the format short; priority will be given to genetic and technical information. Brevity is essential. If a more lengthy communication is felt to be of value, the material should be summarized and an address made available for interested individuals to request more information. Submitted material will be edited for brevity and arranged into each issue. Research reports, lengthy items that cannot be effectively summarized, and material that requires illustration for clarity should be sent directly to Jim Thompson (THOMPSON@AARDVARK.UCS.UOKNOR.EDU) for publication in DIS. Materials appearing in the Newsletter will be reprinted in DIS. Back issues of DIN are available from FlyBase in the directory flybase/news or in News/ when accessing FlyBase with Gopher. Material appearing in the Newsletter may be cited unless specifically noted otherwise. Material for publication should be submitted by e-mail. Figures and photographs cannot be accepted at present. Send technical notes to Carl Thummel and all other material to Kathy Matthews. The e-mail format does not allow special characters to be included in the text. Both superscripts and subscripts have been enclosed in square brackets; the difference should be obvious by context. Bold face, italics, underlining, etc. cannot be retained. Please keep this in mind when preparing submissions. To maintain the original format when printing DIN, use Courier 10cpi font on a standard 8.5" x 11" page with 1" margins. Drosophila Information Newsletter is a trial effort that will only succeed if a broad segment of the community participates. If you have information that would be useful to your colleagues, please take the time to pass it along. The editors: Carl Thummel Kathy Matthews Dept. of Human Genetics Dept. of Biology Eccles Institute - Bldg. 533 Indiana University University of Utah Bloomington, IN 47405 Salt Lake City, UT 84112 812-855-5782; FAX/2577 801-581-2937; FAX/5374 MATTHEWK@INDIANA.EDU CTHUMMEL@HMBGMAIL.MED.UTAH.EDU MATTHEWK@INDIANA.BITNET *** To add your name to the Newsletter distribution list, send one of the following E-mail messages from the account at which you wish to receive DIN. Via Internet -- To: LISTSERV@IUBVM.UCS.INDIANA.EDU Subject: Message: SUB DIS-L Your real name Via Bitnet -- To: LISTSERV@IUBVM Subject: Message: SUB DIS-L Your real name LISTSERV will extract your user name and node from the E-mail header and add you to the list. Use your Internet address if you have one. You will receive confirmation by E-mail if you have successfully signed on to the list. If you are on the list and do not wish to receive DIN, or you want to remove a soon-to- be-defunct address, replace SUB in the above message with UNS. The SUB command can also be used to correct spelling errors in your real name; the new entry will simply replace the old as long as it was sent from the same USERID@NODE address. *** DIN Vol. 18 TABLE OF CONTENTS >Introduction to Drosophila Information Newsletter >How to subscribe to the Newsletter >TABLE OF CONTENTS >ANNOUNCEMENTS >1995 Drosophila Board meeting >Bloomington Stock Center news >Position available >MATERIALS AVAILABLE >Stocks from Burke Judd >New mutation affecting eye-antennal disc derivatives >REQUESTS FOR MATERIALS >Mutations in 15 >Genetic materials in 58D1-2 >GENETIC NOTES >Problem FRT stock >D. simulans 3R inversions >TECHNIQUES >Need PRINS protocol for Drosophila *** ANNOUNCEMENTS DROSOPHILA BOARD MEETS IN ATLANTA The North American Drosophila Board will meet at 2:00 PM, Wednesday, April 5, 1995, in Tower Room 1, Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, Atlanta, GA. If you have concerns you would like brought before the Board, contact your regional representative. Mariana Wolfner, 1993 President of the Board, posted the following explanation of the Board to bionet.drosophila on December 7, 1994. It is reprinted here for those who missed it and aren't familiar with the Drosophila Board. The Drosophila Board meets annually during the Flymeeting to discuss issues of relevance to the fly community. The Board is composed of: - regional representatives who represent *you*. - the present, immediate past and future meetings organizers. - ex officio members representing stock centers, DIS, DIN, FlyBase. Between meetings, the Board is polled by its president on any other issue that may need attention. Board reps serve three-year terms; the terms are staggered. With this posting I am listing the main issues that were discussed at the last Board meeting. Please contact your regional rep if you would like further details, or if you have comments or issues that you want brought up at future Board meetings. The current regional reps are: Northeast: Welcome Bender Mid-Atlantic: Margarete Heck Great Lakes: Helen Salz Midwest: Bill Engels Heartland: Juan Botas California: John Tower Northwest: Susan Parkhurst Canada: Tom Grigliatti The current Board President is Claire Cronmiller. Addresses of all these individuals are in FlyBase. Agenda of last Board meeting: 1. Administrative matters related to financial and organizational issues. 2. Annual flymeeting format, in general, and related issues 3. Statistics for the current meeting (V. Finnerty, organizer) 4. Future meetings (meeting locations rotate: east coast - west coast- central) The dates, sites and organizers for the next several meetings are: 1995, Atlanta, April 5-9, A. Spradling 1996, San Diego, April 27-May 1, Jim Posakony 1997, Chicago or New Orleans, dates TBA [~April 16-20], Organizer TBA 1998, East Coast site TBA, dates TBA, Organizer TBA 1999, Seattle, dates TBA, Barbara Wakimoto and Susan Parkhurst If you wish to volunteer to organize one of the meetings, please contact Claire Cronmiller. 5. Reports on operations, statistics and administration from: Larry Sandler Lectureship Committee Stock Centers DIN DIS FlyBase *** BLOOMINGTON STOCK CENTER NEWS * We will be closed the week of April 3. Requests received between 5:00 PM March 29 and 5:00 PM April 12 will be shipped April 17. * The linking of Bloomington stocks to alleles and aberrations in FlyBase has begun. Use the FlyBase WWW homepage (http://morgan.harvard.edu/) to make use of this new feature. Options to follow links to stocks are available through the CytoSearch and SymbolSearch tools. Approximately 700 alleles and aberrations in Bloomington stock genotypes are not yet linked to objects in FlyBase. * A new version of WAIS has caused some odd problems with wild-card searching of the Stock Center stock lists on FlyBase. We hope to solve this problem in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, to be sure you see all available stocks with alleles of a given gene, search for both gene-symbol* and gene-symbol[*. This can be done in one step by including both in the same query, or separately. For example, if you want to see all stocks with wg alleles, enter your query as: wg* wg[* This will produce a complete list. *** POSTDOCTORAL POSITION AVAILABLE A position is available to study Drosophila germline sex determination, Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIH. For more information contact Brian Oliver at oliver@sc2a.unige.ch. *** MATERIALS AVAILABLE STOCKS AND CLONES Burke Judd, NIEHS, P.O.Box 12233, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2233, USA. Phone: 919-541-4690, FAX 919-541-7593, judd_b@niehs.nih.gov. Some of the following are unique combinations of mutants that will be discarded soon after I leave the NIEHS, March 31, 1995. If you can use any of them please let me know. After March 31, contact Jim Mason (mason-j@vaxe.niehs.nih.gov), who will keep the stocks for another few weeks. z[v77h] w[+] is from Oregon-R z[v77h] w[67c23] w[zm] sc z[1] w[zm] z[v77h] w[zm] y z[a] w[zm] y w[zl] z[1] w[zl] y z[a] w[zl] z[77h] w[zl] sc z[1] w[zvl] In(1)w[m4], y In(1)w[m4], y sn[3] In(1)w[m4], spl sn[3] In(1)w[m4], y z[1] In(1)w[m4], z[v77h] sn[3] In(1)w[m4h], z[v77h] In(1)rst[3] In(1)rst[3], y z[1] In(1)rst[3], z[v77h] Df(1)rst[2], y Df(1)rst[2], z[1] Df(1)Su(z)J93, y z[1]/FM7: The distal breakpoint of this deficiency is 35 to 60 kb proximal to the w locus and extends through rst and vt but does not include N. Deficiency acts as a dominant suppressor of z[1] apparently by acting on the w locus in cis. It also exhibits rst, vt, reduced viability and female sterility. From deletion mapping against various rst and vt deficiencies, the suppressor of z[1] element is proximal to rst-vt. Deficiency occurs at very low frequency as an ectopic exchange product from females heterozygous for y[2] w[sp-2] and z[1] w[zm] or z[1] w[zl]. Several strains were recovered from both types of heterozygotes. Original recombinant chromosomes contained the w[zm] or w[zl] alleles. These have been replaced by crossingover with w[+] from Oregon-R or with w[65a25]. All versions of these derivatives and the parental chromosomes are available. CaSpeR plasmid clones of part of the region from +100 to +163 (white locus map) are available. A transformed line carrying approximately 17.5kb extending from +122.5 to + 142 is available. Johng Lim, who did the transformation, also has a copy of this line. z[J91]: This allele occurred spontaneously in z[1] w[65a25] spl sn[3]. It causes lemon-yellow eye-color in z[J91] w[+] males and z[J91] w[+]/z[+] w[+] females. It acts only in cis, however, thus most likely is acting on the w locus. z-w lethals: One allele of each of 13 lethals located in the region between the z and w loci will be deposited in the Mid-America Stock Center at Bowling Green. As many as three alleles for each locus will be kept here until sometime in April. The deficiencies generated by ectopic recombination in the region flanking the w locus that are described in Montgomery et al., (1991) Genetics 129: 1085-1098, will be available for a few more weeks. echinus locus: We have cloned and sequenced genomic and cDNA that we believe to be the ec locus. However, a transformed line carrying the genomic sequences fails to rescue ec mutations, thus we have not yet published this. Fly strains and clones are available to anyone who is interested in a collaboration to complete this analysis. Contact Bibba Goode, Laboratory of Reproductive Toxicology, NIEHS, P.O. Box 12233, RTP, NC 27709. *** NEW MUTATION AFFECTING EYE-ANTENNAL DISC DERIVATIVES Byeong-ryool Jeong, Department of Biology, Box B79, Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Phone: 812-855-8175, bjeong@ucs.indiana.edu. I found a dominant mutation that resides on the third chromosome in a maintained stock of labial[vd1]. Genetic mapping indicates that this mutation is between curled and ebony. The adult phenotype of this mutation includes: irregular facets and hairs in the eyes (frequent), duplicated or irregular postorbital bristles (frequent), tufted or mirror-image-duplicated vibrissae (frequent), very small eyes (rare), duplication of the antennae (rare), and crooked bristles on top of the head. All of these defects seem to be derived from the eye-antennal disc, and when I looked at the eye-antennal disc of the third instar larvae, I could find morphological defects in some of the discs, such as humps on the eye or the antennal disc. Expression pattern of labial seemed to be unaffected. I named this mutation "Dead[BJ1]" for "Defective eye-antennal disc." In addition to the above phenotypes, this mutation seemed to be temperature-sensitive dominant lethal at 25oC, and to have very low fecundity. I failed to separate the mutation from lab[vd1], therefore, the genotype of the stock is lab[vd1] Dead[BJ1]/TM6B, Tb Hu. This stock will be discarded about the middle of April. If anyone wants this stock, please contact me at the e-mail address above. *** REQUESTS FOR MATERIALS MUTATIONS IN 15 Jim Bloor, Wellcome/CRC Institute, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QR, UK. Tel. 0223 334129, Fax. 0223 334089, jwb1003@mole.bio.cam.ac.uk. I am searching for mutations within division 15 of the X chromosome. I have inflated, rudimentary, bazooka, M(1)15D and forked alleles. I would like any others, can anybody help? *** GENETIC MATERIALS IN 58D1-2 Qi Sun, Division of Biology, 216-76, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Tel. 818-395-8353, FAX, 818-449-0679, sunq@starbase1.caltech.edu. I am looking for deficiencies, P insertions or chromosome aberrations in 58D1-2 or near that region. Thanks in advance for your help. *** GENETIC NOTES A PROBLEM FRT STOCK Norbert Perrimon, Dept. of Genetics, HHMI - Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115-6092, USA. perrimon@rascal.med.harvard.edu. We recently discovered that the Sco FRT40A chromosome which some of you may have obtained from our lab to build recombinants between FRT40A and a specific mutation (m) contains an additional lethal between the FRT and Sco. When this chromosome is used to build recombinants between m and the FRT element, some recombinants will be FRT l m or FRT l rather than the desired FRT m. If you have used this chromosome you should test the putative FRT m recombinant lines for the presence of either m or l. Since Sco is homozygous lethal the presence of the second lethal was not readily detectable. As far as we know the other FRT lines which have been recombined with dominant markers are not associated with a similar problem. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. *** D. SIMULANS 3R INVERSIONS Jerry Coyne, Dept. Ecology and Evolution, The Univ. of Chicago, 1101 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637, and P. Sniegowski, The Center for Microbial Ecology, PSSB, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. jcoyne@pondside.uchicago.edu. We report here a third-chromosome balancer stock of D. simulans that contains previously undescribed paracentric inversions. A full description of the isolation of this chromosome will appear in DIS 75. The normal 3R of D. simulans differs from that of D. melanogaster by a paracentric inversion of 9 numbered divisions. Using the D. melanogaster system, the chromosome order of the normal D. simulans 3R is 61-84F/93F-84F/93F-100. Relative to D. melanogaster, the D. simulans balancer chromosome has the sequence: 61-81F1/[89E1-93F/84F-84E1/84B1-84E1/84B1-81F1]/89E1-84F/93F-100 (The region in brackets is the region inverted relative to the normal D. simulans 3R). This aberration is associated with the dominant mutation Ubx[m] and Dl lies within the inverted region. Although the region balanced by this chromosome is rather small, the stock is useful because it allows one to keep two dominant alleles in trans condition without selection. *** TECHNIQUES NEED PRINS PROTOCOL FOR DROSOPHILA Elisabeth Hauschteck-Jungen, Zoologisches Institut der Universitaet, Winterthurerstr. 190, 8057 Zuerich, Switzerland. Fax: 1 361 31 85; K598315@CZHRZU1A or office28@zool.unizh.ch. PRINS is a successful technique in human cytology but we did not succeed to apply it to Drosophila melanogaster mitotic chromosomes and also not satisfactorily to polytene chromosomes. Does anybody have a PCR protocol which works on polytene chromosome? We would be grateful to get some information. ***