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DmOAZ, the unique Drosophila melanogaster OAZ homologue is involved in posterior spiracle development

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Abstract

In this paper, we study DmOAZ, the unique Drosophila melanogaster homologue of the OAZ zinc finger protein family. We show partial conservation of the zinc finger organization between DmOAZ and the vertebrate members of this family. We determine the exon/intron structure of the dmOAZ gene and deduce its open reading frame. Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis shows that dmOAZ is transcribed throughout life. In the embryo, strongest DmOAZ expression is observed in the posterior spiracles. We suggest that dmOAZ acts as a secondary target of the Abd-B gene in posterior spiracle development, downstream of cut and ems. In a newly created loss-of-function mutant, dmOAZ 93, the “filzkörper” part of the posterior spiracles, is indeed structurally abnormal. The dmOAZ 93 mutant is a larval lethal, a phenotype that may be linked to the spiracular defect. Given the dmOAZ 93 mutant as a new tool, the fruit fly may provide an alternative model for analyzing in vivo the functions of OAZ family members.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Swiss National Funds (grants No. 3100A0-105517 [RFS] and 3234-069273.02 [AR]), Roche Research Foundation, and Fondation Aetas. We are very grateful to Dr. James Castelli-Gair (Centro Andaluz de Biologia del Desarrollo, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain) for providing numerous D. melanogaster strains. We also thank Dr. L.-F. Bersier (Université de Fribourg) for help with statistics and survival analysis, Dr. G. Heimbeck for advice, and J. Meuwly and S. Vuichard for complementation tests.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Ch. du Musée 10, CH-1700, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Anne Krattinger, Nanaë Gendre, Ariane Ramaekers, Nicola Grillenzoni & Reinhard F. Stocker

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  1. Anne Krattinger
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  2. Nanaë Gendre
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  3. Ariane Ramaekers
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  4. Nicola Grillenzoni
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  5. Reinhard F. Stocker
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Correspondence to Reinhard F. Stocker.

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Communicated by P. Simpson

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Figure S1

Complete amino acid sequence alignment of DmOAZ with OAZ, EBFAZ and ROAZ. The ZFs of OAZ and DmOAZ are shown in blue and red, respectively. Asterisks (*) indicate an entirely conserved column, a colon (:) indicates columns where all residues have roughly the same size and hydropathy level, and a period (.) indicates columns where either the size or the hydropathy level has been conserved during evolution (JPEG 1.2 mb)

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Krattinger, A., Gendre, N., Ramaekers, A. et al. DmOAZ, the unique Drosophila melanogaster OAZ homologue is involved in posterior spiracle development. Dev Genes Evol 217, 197–208 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0134-7

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