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aubergine mutations in Drosophila melanogaster impair P cytotype determination by telomeric P elements inserted in heterochromatin.

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Abstract

Transposable P elements inserted in the heterochromatic Telomeric Associated Sequences on the X chromosome (1A site) of Drosophila melanogaster have a very strong capacity to elicit the P cytotype, a maternally transmitted condition which represses P element transposition and P-induced hybrid dysgenesis. This repressive capacity has previously been shown to be sensitive to mutant alleles of the gene Su(var)205, which encodes HP1 (Heterochromatin Protein 1), thus suggesting a role for chromatin structure in repression. Since an interaction between heterochromatin formation and RNA interference has been reported in various organisms, we tested the effect of mutant alleles of aubergine, a gene that has been shown to play a role in RNA interference in Drosophila, on the repressive properties of telomeric P elements. Seven out of the eight mutant alleles tested clearly impaired the repressive capacities of the two independent telomeric P insertions at 1A analyzed. P repression by P strains whose repressive capacities are not linked to the presence of P copies at 1A were previously found to be insensitive to Su(var)205; here, we show that they are also insensitive to aubergine mutations. These results strongly suggest that both RNA interference and heterochromatin structure are involved in the establishment of the P cytotype elicited by telomeric P elements, and reinforce the hypothesis that different mechanisms for repression of P elements exist which depend on the chromosomal location of the regulatory copies of P.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Paul Macdonald, Jean-René Huynh, Daniel St Johnston, Alain Bucheton and Vladimir Gvozdev for the gift of lines. We thank Jean-René Huynh and Chantal Vaury for communicating results prior to publication. We thank Anne Marie Pret and Laure Teysset for their help in the preparation of the manuscript, and Valérie Delmarre and Paula Graca for technical assistance. We are grateful to the Bloomington Stock Center for providing stocks and to FlyBase for helpful information. This work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR 7592), by the programme Génome, by the Association pour le Recherche sur le Cancer, and by the Universités Paris 6-Pierre et Marie Curie and Paris 7-Denis Diderot (Institut Jacques Monod—UMR7592, Dynamique du Génome et Evolution). Daphné Reiss and Thibaut Josse were the recipients of fellowships from the French Government (Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche). This work was carried out in compliance with the current laws governing genetic experimentation in France and in the USA

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  1. Laboratoire “Dynamique du Génome et Evolution”, Institut Jacques Monod, UMR7592, CNRS-Universités Paris 6 et 7, 2 Place Jussieu, 75251, Paris Cedex 05, France

    D. Reiss, T. Josse, D. Anxolabéhère & S. Ronsseray

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  1. D. Reiss
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  2. T. Josse
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Correspondence to S. Ronsseray.

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Reiss, D., Josse, T., Anxolabéhère, D. et al. aubergine mutations in Drosophila melanogaster impair P cytotype determination by telomeric P elements inserted in heterochromatin.. Mol Genet Genomics 272, 336–343 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-004-1061-1

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