title: Evidence that white-blood is a novel type of temperature-sensitive mutation resulting from temperature-dependent effects of a transposon insertion on formation of white transcripts.
abstract: We report results indicating that the temperature-sensitive white-blood (wbl) mutation has a novel molecular basis, involving the formation of RNA transcripts of the affected gene rather than the behavior of the polypeptide product. First, we show that the temperature-sensitive mutant phenotype of wbl correlates with (and presumably results from) a temperature-dependent effect on levels of the 2.6-kb polyadenylated white transcript. Second, DNA sequence analysis and other studies show that wbl is associated with the insertion into the second white intron of a previously uncharacterized retrotransposon (designated the blood transposon). We discuss the potential origins of the novel temperature-sensitive molecular phenotype of wbl and the prospects for exploiting wbl to engineer temperature-sensitive mutations in other genes.
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D001769:Blood; D004262:DNA Restriction Enzymes; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D008297:Male; D009154:Mutation; D009693:Nucleic Acid Hybridization; D010858:Pigmentation; D013696:Temperature; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004262:DNA Restriction Enzymes