Hybrid Genes in the Study of Glue Gene Regulation in Drosophila

Abstract

Gene transfer experiments in Drosophila have led to important advances in our understanding of gene structure in higher eukaryotes. Since the introduction of germ line transformation using P-element vectors (Rubin and Spradling 1982), we have learned a good deal regarding the regulation of a small number of carefully chosen genes and there have been confirmatory data from a larger number of genes whose detailed analysis is more difficult. In the case of genes with relatively short transcription units, spanning 2 or 3 kb of DNA, normal developmental regulation is possible with less than a 10-kb genomic fragment and this in the majority of chromosomal insertion sites (Goldberg et al. 1983; Richards et al. 1983; Scholnick et al. 1983; Spradling and Rubin 1983). This result is important for our concepts of genome structure and function because classical studies in Drosophila, largely based on polytene chromosome banding patterns, had suggested that genes...