Cortex, a Drosophila gene required to complete oocyte meiosis, is a member of the Cdc20/fizzy protein family.

T Chu, G Henrion, V Haegeli, S Strickland

Department of Pharmacology, Program in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA.

Genesis (New York, N.Y. : 2000) 2001 Mar

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Mutations in cortex and grauzone cause abnormal arrest in Drosophila female meiosis. cortex was mapped to a 14 kb interval in 26F-27A by the male recombination mapping method. While these experiments mapped the gene accurately, they also illustrated some complexities of this method. Rescue results showed that a 2.8 kb genomic fragment from this interval was able to fully rescue the cortex phenotype. The 2.8 kb rescuing fragment contains a single open reading frame. The predicted amino acid sequence indicates that cortex encodes a WD-repeat protein and is a distant member of the Cdc20 protein family. Results from a developmental Northern analysis showed that the cortex transcript is expressed at high levels during oogenesis and early embryogenesis. Interestingly, the meiotic metaphase-anaphase II arrest defect in embryos laid by cortex homozygous females resembles the mitotic metaphase-anaphase defects observed in yeast cdc20 mutants. The predicted nature of the Cortex protein, together with the observed meiotic phenotype in cortex mutants, suggest that a similar pathway to the cdc20 dependent APC-mediated proteolysis pathway, which governs the metaphase-anaphase transition in mitosis, is also important in regulating oocyte meiosis.

Citation

T Chu, G Henrion, V Haegeli, S Strickland. Cortex, a Drosophila gene required to complete oocyte meiosis, is a member of the Cdc20/fizzy protein family. Genesis (New York, N.Y. : 2000). 2001 Mar;29(3):141-52