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What the papers say: A puff is born
Author(s) -
Spierer Pierre
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.950040309
Subject(s) - polytene chromosome , biology , gene , genetics , transcription (linguistics) , coding region , drosophila melanogaster , linguistics , philosophy
Puffing of polytene chromosomes is associated with intense genetic activity. Genetic determinants of puffing in Drosophila can now be dissected by transplanting genes known to puff to other chromosomal locations by transposonmediated germ line transformation. Recent studies show that induction of a heat shock puff requires only about one hundred and fifty base pairs of DNA upstream of the gene, around the start of transcription, and not the protein coding sequence itself. Moreover, the size of the ‘ectopic’ puff was found to be related to the size of the corresponding transcript. Similar work is now in progress with hormonally‐controlled puffs.