Expression of a Drosophila GATA Transcription Factor in Multiple Tissues in the Developing Embryos

doi:10.1074/jbc.270.42.25150

Expression of a Drosophila GATA Transcription Factor in Multiple Tissues in the Developing Embryos

IDENTIFICATION OF HOMOZYGOUS LETHAL MUTANTS WITH P-ELEMENT INSERTION AT THE PROMOTER REGION (*)

From the (1)Institute of Genetics, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei 112, Taiwan, Republic of China, the
(2) Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan, Republic of China, and the
(3) Imperial Cancer Research Fund, P. O. Box 123, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC 2A 3PX, United Kingdom

^¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 886-2-822-5355; Fax: 886-2-826-4930.

↵^§ Present address: Molecular-Genetic Genome Analysis, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, D-69120, Germany.

Abstract

GATA transcription factors are DNA-binding proteins that recognize the core consensus sequence, WGATAR. Previous studies indicated that GATA factors play an important role in the development of tissue-specific functions in vertebrates. Here we report the identification of a new Drosophila melanogaster GATA factor, dGATAc, which displays a distinct expression pattern in embryos. The local concentration of dGATAc transcripts varies at different stages, being most prominent in the procephalic region at stages 6-10 and in the posterior spiracles, the gut, and the central nervous system at stages 11-13. On the basis of its predicted sequence, DNA-binding assays were performed to confirm that the dGATAc gene encodes a zinc finger protein that can bind the GATA consensus motif with predicted specificity. Two independent mutants carrying a P-element insertion at the dGATAc gene promoter region were identified that are homozygous lethal at the embryonic stage. Using a genetic scheme, it was demonstrated that the lack of dGATAc function can block normal embryonic development. Our results suggest that the dGATAc protein is a tissue-specific transcription factor that is vital to the development of multiple organ systems in D. melanogaster.

Footnotes

↵* This work was supported in part by Grants NSC82-0203-B001-98 (to Y. H. S.) and NSC82-0412-080-102 (to S.-F. T.), and the Clinical Research Center, Veteran's General Hospital-Taipei, Institute of Biomedical Science, Academia Sinica, Republic of China. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore by hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank™/EMBL Data Bank with accession number(s) D50542[GenBank].
↵¹ The abbreviations used are:

bp

base pair(s)

PCR

polymerase chain reaction

kb

kilobase pair(s)

CS

Canton-S.
↵²S.-F. Tsai, unpublished data.
↵³W.-H. Lin and S.-F. Tsai, unpublished results.
↵⁴J.-Y. Yeh and S.-F. Tsai, unpublished results.
- Received January 17, 1995.
- Revision received June 29, 1995.