loki was identified in our lab in a screen for novel serine-threonine protein kinases that are specifically expressed in the ovary. loki transcripts are expressed in early embryos and adult ovaries. In the ovaries, loki transcripts accumulate in the oocyte during early oogenesis, and by stage 8, are found to localize anteriorly to the oocyte-nurse cell interface. In order to understand the role of loki in Drosophila development, I created a loki mutant through excision of a P-element that had inserted 700bp upstream of loki. loki mutants display no apparent phenotype. / I was also able to identify the transcription unit responsible for valois (vls) function since it is located downstream from loki in the 38B region. vls is a member of the posterior group gene family and vls mutant mother produce embryos that lack pole cells and show abdomen patterning defects. Further characterization of vls indicates that it is a fairly direct activator of Vasa protein: vls function is required between Oskar protein and Vasa in the posterior patterning pathway since Vasa fails to localize to the posterior pole of vls mutant eggchambers. I also find that Vasa is differentially modified in vls ovaries and embryos, even though it is not yet known whether this modification is required for localization, proper function or both processes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.21565 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Hijal, Sirine. |
| Contributors | Suter, Beat (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Biology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001658583, proquestno: MQ50787, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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