Identifying The Laker Gene In Drosophila Melanogaster: A Gene Proposed To Be Involved In Muscle Function

Drosophila melanogaster is a useful model for studying human muscle structure. Through the manipulation of fly muscles we may learn how to treat muscle damage and disease in humans. The basis of this project is to determine the location of the Laker gene, a gene involved in muscle function located on the third chromosome in the region between 62A10 and 62B4 in Drosophila. Homozygous Laker mutants are lethal while heterozygous mutants are flightless indicating that they are haploinsufficient for flight. I performed several tests to locate the Laker gene.  Tests that assess the ability of the animal to fly are conducted on flies with deletions in specific chromosomal regions. The testing showed five lines to be flightless and then I further examined these lines by looking at their muscle structure.  Stocks of flightless flies were cryosectioned and the muscle structure was visualized by fluorescence microscopy.  The results of these tests identified the location of the Laker gene to the region A11 to B1 on the third chromosome.  This region consists of approximately 12 genes.  The next step in this project will be to utilize flies from the Transgenic RNAi Project (TRiP) to knock-down expression of each of these genes.  If one of these genes is the Laker gene than the offspring of the knock-down experiment should have a flightless phenotype and a distorted muscle structure.  These studies will help us to better understand the muscle function of flies providing insights into molecular mechanisms that are conserved from flies to humans.