Gene co-regulation caused by the special positional relationship in the early stages of Drosophila embryos

Abstract

The genetic regulation mechanism of early Drosophila embryo has been a research hotspot in the past few decades. Understanding the early genetic regulation mechanisms of Drosophila embryos plays an important role in understanding the growth and development of other animals. In previous studies, an important Transcription Activator, Zelda (Zld), was reported. Zld is a global activator of early embryonic transcription. During the early development of embryos, all animals undergo the material-to-zygotic Transition (MZT), where Zld plays an important role in degrading maternal mRNA and mediating the expression of over 120 zygotic genes. The absence or mutation of Zld will directly lead to the inability of the embryo to complete the MZT process and result in lethality. TAGteam is a special sequence upstream of many genes in Drosophila, and Zld plays a role as a binding protein of TAGteam. TAGteam is a highly conserved sequence that generally exists in the form of CAGGTAG. Mutations or lack of TAGteam often result in inability to bind to Zld, resulting in the inability of genes to be expressed normally. The two genes involved in this experiment, CG14014 (2L: 5549709.. 550835 [-]) and CG18269 (2L: 5551838.. 5552756 [+]), are two adjacent genes on the Drosophila chromosome. They are located on two different DNA strands and facing in opposite directions, while their current role is not yet clear. There are typical TAGteam sequences upstream of both genes. This article conducts experiments to verify the relationship between these two genes and the regulation of Zld protein, and explores the possibility of their co-regulation by designing experiments.