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Regulation of the distribution of Ultrabithorax proteins in Drosophila

Abstract

The role of the bithorax complex (BX-C) in the genome of the fruitfly Drosophila is to specify the developmental pathways followed by cells in most of the insect's thoracic and abdominal segments1. The BX-C has three lethal complementation groups, Ubx, abd-A and Abd-B, which have their major effects in progressively more posterior parts of the animal (Fig. 1)2. Within the Ubx region3 there are four phenotypically distinct classes of mutations, abx, bx, bxd and pbx, each of which results in a part of the Ubx mutant phenotype1,4. Here we show that these subfunction mutations all affect the distribution of Ubx proteins. The results support the view that the Ubx proteins represent the executive functions of the Ubx region5 and that the subfunction mutations affect regulatory regions required for the normal pattern of Ubx expression5,6. In addition, we show that the region of the BX-C containing the abd-A and Abd-B complementation groups regulates the distribution of Ubx products.

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White, R., Wilcox, M. Regulation of the distribution of Ultrabithorax proteins in Drosophila. Nature 318, 563–567 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/318563a0

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