MicroRNAs in the Drosophila bithorax complex

1. Welcome Bender1

1. Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

Abstract

The iab-4 noncoding RNA from the Drosophila bithorax complex is the substrate for a microRNA (miRNA). Gene conversion was used to delete the hairpin precursor of this miRNA; flies homozygous for this deletion are sterile. Surprisingly, this mutation complements with rearrangement breakpoint mutations that disrupt the iab-4 RNA but fails to complement with breaks mapping in the iab-5 through iab-7 regulatory regions. These breaks disrupt the iab-8 RNA, transcribed from the opposite strand. This iab-8 RNA also encodes a miRNA, detected on Northern blots, derived from the hairpin complementary to the iab-4 precursor hairpin. Ultrabithorax is a target of both miRNAs, although its repression is subtle in both cases.

• Ultrabithorax
• noncoding RNA
• abdominal-A
• iab-8 RNA]

Footnotes

• ↵1 Correspondence.

  ↵1 PHONE (617) 432-1906; FAX (617) 738-0516.

• PHONE (617) 432-1906; FAX (617) 738-0516.

• Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1614208

• • Received September 10, 2007.
  • Accepted November 9, 2007.
• Copyright © 2008, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press