In cell cycle checkpoint control, the Chk2 family protein kinases play a central role in mediating the cellular responses to DNA damage or DNA replication block. However, at the beginning of this project, there was no evidence for a Drosophila homologue of Chk2. loki was identified in a screen for serine/threonine protein kinases that are expressed in the ovary. Using a phylogenetic analysis, I showed that loki is a Drosophila chk2 orthologue. To characterize the checkpoint function of loki in Drosophila development, we created a loki null mutant and generated anti-Loki antibodies. Under normal laboratory conditions, loki null mutants display no apparent defect during the whole life span. Further functional analysis revealed that loki is not required for the meiotic pachytene checkpoint, the essential DNA replication checkpoint control in syncytial embryos and the DNA damage/replication checkpoint during the larval stage. However, in postblastoderm embryos, loki is required for the DNA damage checkpoint activated by gamma irradiation. Embryos lacking loki are not able to arrest the cell cycle in response to gamma irradiation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33859 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Yang, Long, 1976- |
| 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: 001874558, proquestno: MQ78976, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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