Comparative functional and evolutionary analysis of essential germline stem cell genes across the genus Drosophila and two outgroup species.

ABSTRACT: In Drosophila melanogaster, bag of marbles (bam) encodes a protein essential for germline stem cell (GSC) daughter differentiation in early gametogenesis. Despite its essential role in D. melanogaster, direct functional evaluation of bam in other closely related Drosophila species reveal this essential function is not necessarily conserved. In Drosophila teissieri, for example, bam is not essential for GSC daughter differentiation. Here, we generated bam null alleles using CRISPR-Cas9 in a species more distantly related to D. melanogaster, Drosophila americana, to interrogate whether bam's essential GSC differentiation function is novel to the melanogaster species group or a function more ancestral to the Drosophila genus. To further characterize the extent of the functional flexibility of

SUBMITTER: Arnce LR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12693576 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature