Document Type
Honors Thesis
Abstract
The nucleus houses most of the genes encoding mitochondrial proteins, called nuclear-encoded mitochondrial (N-mt) genes. In Drosophila melanogaster, twenty-four percent of N-mt genes are clustered into gene families. Interestingly, all tissue-specific Nmt duplicates show testis-specific expression; of these, fifty-two percent function in oxidative energy production. To understand these patterns, two N-mt duplicates (COX4L and CG7514) were studied. It is hypothesized that male sterility due to loss of gene function and deleterious effects of somatic ectopic/over expression for the duplicates but not for their parents. This research knocked down COX4L and CG7514 driving RNAi using the Gal4-UAS system. This study examines a transposable element insertion mutant for CG7514 and rescue a CRISPR-Cas9 knockout of COX4L that shows a sterility phenotype. The results support the hypothesized role in sperm mitochondria for COX4L but additional experiments are needed for CG7514. CG1907 was overexpressed and ectopically expressed its child CG7514 using Gal4-UAS system and Actin5C-Gal4 to drive in soma. Against the hypothesis, this ectopic/over overexpression was lethal for both genes and could be due to the dose effect for both genes precluding the comparison between the function of both genes in the soma.
Publication Date
5-1-2019
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Parekh, Rupandey, "STUDY OF GENE FUNCTION IN TWO TESTIS-SPECIFIC NUCLEAR-ENCODED MITOCHONDRIAL GENE DUPLICATES IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER" (2019). 2019 Spring Honors Capstone Projects. 13.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/honors_spring2019/13