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Published July 1992 | Published
Journal Article Open

The period gene encodes a predominantly nuclear protein in adult Drosophila

Abstract

The period gene of Drosophila melanogaster (per) is important for the generation and maintenance of biological rhythms. Previous light microscopic observations indicated that per is expressed in a variety of tissues and cell types and suggested that the per protein (PER) may be present in different subcellular compartments. To understand how PER influences circadian rhythms, it is important to define its subcellular location, especially in adult flies where inducible promoter experiments suggested that it is most relevant to circadian locomotor activity rhythms. To this end, we report the results of an immunoelectron microscopic analysis of wild-type flies and per-beta- galactosidase (beta-gal) fusion gene transgenics using a polyclonal anti-PER antibody or an anti-beta-gal antibody, respectively. Most of the PER antigen and the fusion gene product were located within nuclei, suggesting that PER acts in that subcellular compartment to affect circadian rhythms. The results are discussed in terms of per's possible biochemical functions.

Additional Information

© 1992 Society for Neuroscience. Beginning six months after publication the Work will be made freely available to the public on SfN's website to copy, distribute, or display under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Received Aug. 27, 1991; revised Feb. 11, 1992; accepted Feb. 14, 1992. We are grateful to U. Banejee and R. Young for help with the initial immunoelectron microscopic experiments at Caltech, to N. O'Donoghue for help with electron microscopy at Brandeis, and to H. Steller for instruction on the silver enhancement. We appreciate that S. Crews and O. Hankinson communicated results prior to publication. We thank H. V. Colot for comments on the manuscript and T. Tishman for secretarial assistance. This work was supported by an NIH grant (GM-33205) to J.C.H. and M.R., and by the NSF (DMB-8908154) and the Gordon Ross Foundation (S.B.).

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August 20, 2023
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