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Mutagenesis of de novo genes via CRISPR‐Cas9 in Drosophila Melanogaster
Author(s) -
Nicosia Julia,
Reinhardt Josephine
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.620.8
Subject(s) - biology , gene , crispr , genetics , crispr interference , drosophila melanogaster , cas9 , gene duplication , rna interference , mutagenesis , rna , computational biology , mutation
The origin of new genes helps explain how organisms have evolved to become increasingly complex over time. New genes can arise in several ways including duplication, gene fusion, horizontal gene transfer, and de novo. De novo genes arose from previously non‐coding DNA, meaning the gene began coding for a protein only recently in evolutionary history. Many de novo genes in Drosophila are expressed mainly in the testis, and surprisingly, previous work using RNA interference showed these genes may be essential to both male fertility and viability. However, we do not know whether these genes function as proteins, like most genes, or as functional RNAs. We are using CRISPR‐Cas9, a gene modification tool, to create null mutations in Drosophila melanogaster's de novo genes to answer this question. We designed CRISPR‐Cas9 targets to induce a small frame‐shifting deletion and also to delete a large section of the gene. The frame‐shifting mutation will presumably impact the protein function, but not the functional RNA. Meanwhile, the deletion will affect the function of the RNA and protein. We have created CRISPR‐Cas9 targeting constructs for multiple de novo genes, and are in the process of injecting these into Cas‐9 transgenic stocks and genotyping to detect expected mutations. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .