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H Pelham

Publications and source records attributed to H Pelham.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Mutation of the Adh gene of Drosophila melanogaster containing an internal tandem duplication.

AdhnLA248 is an X-ray-induced mutation of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene of Drosophila melanogaster that lacks detectable ADH protein but is transcribed. The transcript of this mutant allele is longer than that of the wild type. This is because the mutation is a duplication of parts of the second and third exons of Adh and of the intron that normally separates them. The primary transcript of the mutant allele is processed by the removal of both of the identical copies of intron 3. This mutation presumably originated, in the haploid sperm, as two staggered single-stranded breaks that gave rise to the duplication as a consequence of replication after fertilization.

Alcohol Oxidoreductases↗

Expression of a Drosophila heat shock protein in mammalian cells: transient association with nucleoli after heat shock.

We transformed mouse L cells with a cloned Drosophila hsp70 gene and obtained cells with either heat-inducible or constitutively expressed copies of the gene. The distribution of hsp70 in these cells was examined by indirect immunofluorescence with monoclonal antibodies specific to the Drosophila protein. In constitutive cells, hsp70 was present in both cytoplasm and nucleus. After heat shock, the nuclear hsp70 was transiently concentrated in nucleoli, from which it had previously been excluded; the cytoplasmic hsp70 moved to a perinuclear location, a result consistent with it being associated with intermediate filaments of the cytoskeleton. The nucleolar migration took several hours and was partly inhibited by actinomycin D, but was independent of protein synthesis; it may reflect binding to newly-synthesized rRNA. Drosophila hsp70 was also expressed from replicating plasmids in monkey COS cells, and was found to be concentrated in nuclei even at low temperature. Migration to nucleoli occurred after heat shock. These results indicate that a single protein can have multiple interactions with cellular components, and form the basis for future studies of these interactions by in vitro mutagenesis and expression of the hsp70 gene.

Animals↗

Post-transcriptional control in the early mouse embryo.

The earliest stages of mouse embryogenesis, from fertilisation to the two-cell stage, are characterised by an extremely low level of RNA synthesis. Indeed, during this period, RNA polymerase II activity and incorporation of labelled precurosrs into heterogeneous RNA are not detectable, and there is no increase in the poly(A) content of the embryo, but rather a slight decrease. The rate of protein synthesis remains low and relatively constant throughout the one- and two-cell stages. However, qualitative analysis of the protein synthetic profile on SDS gels has revealed changes which appear around the late one-cell to early two-cell stage. This early change in the pattern of polypeptide synthesis represents the first major qualitative molecular change found so far in development. We present evidence which suggests that the increased synthesis at the early two-cell stage of a small number of polypeptides of molecular weight 35,000 is not dependent on transcription, but rather represents control at a post-transcriptional level using mRNAs synthesised before fertilisation.

Amanitins↗