Project description:Testes and testes terminal epithelium/seminal vesicles were dissected and separated from 4-5 day old Oregon-R-modENCODE Drosophila melanogaster males. RNA-sequencing was then performed on these two distinct biological structures.
Project description:Spermiogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster is a highly conserved process and essential for male fertility. In this haploid phase of spermatogenesis, motile sperm are assembled from round cells, flagella are assembled, and needle-shaped nuclei with highly compacted genomes are formed. We aimed at identifying proteins relevant for the maturation phase from spermatids to sperm. As transcription takes place mainly in spermatocytes, and transcripts with relevance for post-meiotic sperm development are translationally repressed for days, we comparatively analysed the prote-ome of larval testes (stages before meiotic divisions), of testes of 1–2-day-old pupae (meiotic and early spermatid stages) and adult flies (late spermatids and sperm). We identified 6677 pro-teins, with 422 solely detected in larval testes, 623 in pupal testes and 634 in adult testes. We analysed a few so far uncharacterized proteins with repect to stage specific expression and im-portance for male fertility. For example, Mst84B (gene CG1988), a very basic cysteine- and lysine-rich nuclear protein, was present in the phase of transition from a histone-based to a pro-tamine-based chromatin structure. CG6332 encodes d-Theg, which is related to the mouse tHEG and human THEG proteins. Mutants of d-Theg lacked sperm in the seminal vesicles and were sterile. The identification of numerous predicted proteins underscores the high potential of pro-teome analysis for future analyses of spermatogenesis.
Project description:Thermal acclimation study on Drosophila melanogaster reared at 3 different temperatures (12, 25, and 31oC). The proteomic profiles of D. melanogaster under these different temperatures were analyzed and compared using label-free tandem mass spectrometry.
Project description:In order to study the effect of protease treatment on dissected testes, we performed different strategies of cleaning and dissociation on Drosophila melanogaster w1118 larval testes. We collected testes without protease treatment with fatbody just attached around the gonad, fatbody alone dissected from around the testes, testes without fatbody and testes dissociated by either by Papain or Trypsin and Collagenase cocktail. We prepared poly A+ RNA-Seq libraries and performed transcriptional profiling to generate 50 bp stranded single end reads.
Project description:CG3875 is a young duplicate gene of kep1 family originated recently in Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster) species complex (including D. melanogaster, D. simulans, D. mauritiana and D. sechellia) after it split from D. yakuba. It encodes an RNA-binding protein containing a single maxi-KH domain. Characterization of loss-of-function phenotypes of CG3875 mutants generated by gene targeting demonstrated that CG3875 null males display a seriously reduced fertility compared with wildtype males and most of the null males are completely sterile. Further cytological identification of CG3875 null males suggested that CG3875 plays an important role in spermiogenesis processes including sperm individualization and sperm coiling. In addition, CG3875 is also essential for the formation of outer dynein arm of sperm axoneme. In order to identify the molecular mechanism responsible for the involvement of CG3875 in spermiogenesis and structural integrity of sperm axoneme, we performed microarray analysis to identify transcripts whose levels are altered in the testes of CG3875 null males. We compared gene expression profiles between testes of 0-2 day CG3875 null mutants and wildtype flies, respectively. For the sake of an identical genetic background between knockout flies and wildtype flies, the wildtype stock used here is wildtype recombinant line created during gene targeting. Seminal vesicles were removed from the testes during dissection. Two independent RNA extractions and hybridizations were conducted for each sample.
Project description:To verify unannotated translated open reading frames (utORFs) identified from Drosophila melanogaster, we collected data to target them.
