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Formation of the male-specific muscle in female Drosophila by ectopic fruitless expression

Nature Cell Biology volume 2, pages 500–506 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The Drosophila fruitless (fru) gene product Fru has been postulated to be a neural sex-determination factor that directs the development of at least two male-specific characteristics, namely courtship behaviour and formation of the muscle of Lawrence (MOL). The fru gene encodes a putative transcription factor with a BTB domain and two zinc-finger motifs, and with consensus Tra-binding sequences. The binding of Tra to these sequences results in sex-specific alternative splicing of the fru mRNA, leading to production of the ‘male-type’ or ‘female-type’ Fru protein. We show here that the Fru protein is not detected in the female central nervous system (CNS), despite the similar level of expression of fru mRNA in both male and female CNS. As ectopic expression of both the ‘male-type’ (with the sequence for the amino-terminal extension) and ‘female-type’ (without the sequence for the amino-terminal extension) fru cDNA can induce formation of the MOL in females, the presence or absence of the Fru protein, and not its sex-specific structure, seems to be responsible for the sexually dimorphic actions of the fru gene.

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Figure 1: Structure of the fru gene.
Figure 2: Expression pattern of the fru gene product.
Figure 3: Inhibition of translation by binding of the Tra protein.
Figure 4: Induction of formation of the MOL by artificial expression of fru + cDNA.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Niwa for her assistance with the preliminary experiments, S. C. Fujita, J. C. Hall, O. Burtis, S. Robinow, K. Inoue, K.-i. Kimura, and J. P. Phillips for the antibodies, fly stocks, plasmids and cDNAs, and S. Kondo and Y. Kai for secretarial assistance. This study was supported in part by Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology from the Science and Technology Agency of Japan (to D.Y.), and Waseda University Grant No. 99 A-885.

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.Y. The nucleotide sequences described here have been deposited at GenBank under following the accession numbers:

AF220176 (fru-A-female type), AF221077 (fru-A-male type), AF220178 (fru-B-exon 8), AF220179 (fru-C-exon 8), AF220180 ( fru-D-exon 7 to 3′ end) and AF220181 (fru-E-exon 8).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Human Sciences and Advanced Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 2-579-15, Tokorozawa, Mikajima, 359-1192, Japan

    Kazue Usui-Aoki, Kuniaki Takahashi, Tamas Lukacsovich, Jun-ya Tomida & Daisuke Yamamoto

  2. ERATO Yamamoto behaviour Genes Project, Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST), at Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Life Sciences , Machida, 194-8511, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazue Usui-Aoki, Hiroki Ito, Kuniaki Takahashi, Tamas Lukacsovich, Wakae Awano, Hiromi Nakata, Eric E. Nilsson & Daisuke Yamamoto

  3. Department of Pharmacology, Nippon Medical School Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8602, Japan

    Kumiko Ui-Tei & Zheng Fu Piao

  4. Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Osaka, 599-8531 , Japan

    Jun-ya Tomida

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  1. Kazue Usui-Aoki
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Usui-Aoki, K., Ito, H., Ui-Tei, K. et al. Formation of the male-specific muscle in female Drosophila by ectopic fruitless expression. Nat Cell Biol 2, 500–506 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35019537

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