Drosophila melanogaster, which commonly is known as fruit fly, has been used in genetic study for centuries. They tend to give birth to a large amount of offspring while their life cycles and generations are short. Their genes can be mutated easily by radiation or mutagens in food. They have four large chromosomes with approximately fourteen thousands genes. As expected, human have several times more gene than D. melanogaster, however, we have almost the same number of gene families. And fortunately, their genes are easier to identify and sequence than our. Additionally, biological processes of human and fruit fly are also similar (Hughes, 2012). Thanks to that, we are able to study human behavior and basic biology using these …show more content…
Homozygous mutation can be lethal, only some of the lucky offspring can survive. Heterozygous is most common type that we can observe. hid is on chromosome 3L. The expression of gene depends on what types of mutation happen on the genes. After many researches, scientists conclude that hid plays a really important role in apoptosis. Most of them happen right after eclosion (Abbott, 1991). There are multiple alleles that are in hid. hidWR+X1 is one of the key allele for us to determine the function of hid (Grether, 1995). It prevents expression mRNA of hid by removing the 5’ end of hid. The deletion leads to the destruction of the whole mRNA during transcription. The offspring with this mutation show little to none death cells in the head region in embryo. Another one, which produces the wing mutation, is hidw138. It’s partially lethal and produced non-transparent wings by blocking the apoptosis in MF (Tanaka-Matakatsu,2009).
Molecular characteristics of hid and …show more content…
It was created specific for apoptosis of polar cells. Those cells are destined to die during the early development of Drosophila melanogaster. This can be done by proteolytic cleavage of essential proteins by Caspases, a group of aspartate-specific cysteine (Khammari, 2009). There are total 7 genes that code for Drosophila melanogaster. Caspases normally are inactivation mode by bounding to inhibitors of apoptosis (IAP). As soon as apoptotic stimuli are detected, IAPs will bind to its antagonists. This would allow Caspases to activate and bending to cleave proteins. Hid, together with Reaper and Grim, are the activators that induce the signal for apoptosis. Mutation in hid gene will prevent the induction of apoptosis signal. hidWR+X1 is an allele that cause non-expression of hid mRNA, which lead to the absent of Hid. The mutants were found to have less apoptosis in the head region compare to wild type ((Grether, 1995). The mutation cause the deletion in 5’ of the mRNA of hid. This has lead to the destruction of the entire mRNA. hidw138 is another mutation that cause the destruction of hid mRNA. It causes a 312bp deletion in second exon of the sequence. This leads to frame-shift and pre-mature stop (Tanaka-Matakatsu,