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Domains of action of bithorax genes in Drosophila central nervous system

par Teugels, Erik ;Ghysen, Alain
Référence Nature (London), 314, 6011, page (558-561)
Publication Publié, 1985

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

The diversification of all Drosophila segments posterior to the mesothorax is controlled by a single gene cluster, the bithorax complex (BX-C). Various observations have led to the conclusion that the BX-C is involved in the segmental determination of both the central nervous system (CNS) and the epidermis. In general, the neural and epidermal effects of a given BX-C mutation were found to occur in the same segment. However, only one neural structure was examined in each of these experiments; furthermore, the segmental origin of these few structures was in most cases unclear, making it impossible to decide whether or not the action of the BX-C genes is confined to the same regions in the epidermis and the CNS. Here we describe a set of 18 uniquely recognizable fascicles in the adult CNS, and establish the segmental origin of each of them. We analyse the effect of different BX-C mutations on these fascicles, and show that each mutation affects a region that overlaps two consecutive segments. We conclude that in the CNS, the spatial domains of action of BX-C genes are segment-length units which are out of register with the epidermal segments.