580C Poster - 08. Patterning, morphogenesis and organogenesis
Saturday April 09, 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Authors:
Abdulqater Al-nouman; Jennifer Curtiss

Affiliation: New Mexico State University

Keywords:
f. eye disc; h. translational regulation

Eyeless is a paired-homeodomain transcription factor that sits at or near the top of a network of transcriptional factors that initiate eye development in D. melanogaster. Eyeless is conserved across metazoans, with the human ortholog being Pax6. Transcriptional networks such as this are required for cell fate determination in all tissues especially during development when a single egg cell differentiates into the astonishing variety of cells seen in an organism. Previous transcriptomic data and chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) analysis suggest that the D. melanogaster gene CG46385 is a direct transcriptional target of Eyeless. CG46385 is the D. melanogaster ortholog of human TENT5, which has been shown to function as a non-canonical poly-A polymerase (PAP). PAPs are involved in modification of mRNA by adding long strings of adenine bases to the 3` end, which can affect mRNA stability and translational efficiency. Because CG46385 is a direct transcriptional target of Eyeless, we hypothesize that it has a role in regulating gene expression during eye initiation by regulating mRNA stability. We are performing fluorescent in-situ hybridization on larval eye-antennal imaginal disks and embryos to determine at what stage of development and in what cells CG46385 may function. In addition, we are generating CRISPR-Cas9 mediated CG46385 mutants and plan to observe the eye phenotypes of these mutants to determine CG46385’s role in eye development. Our studies will provide insight into the function of the human ortholog TENT5, which has been linked to congenital diseases including retinitis pigmentosa and osteogenesis imperfecta.