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R Bjornson

Publications and source records attributed to R Bjornson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The Autographa californica baculovirus genome: evidence for multiple replication origins.

The Autographa californica multinucleocapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV), which is used for the overexpression of eukaryotic genes and is being engineered for possible use as a viral insecticide, has a circular, supercoiled genome of approximately 128 kilobases. Despite its widespread use, little is known about the mechanism by which AcMNPV replicates. Evidence is presented in this report that AcMNPV origins of DNA replication are repeated sequences each containing several closely related imperfect palindromes that are present in six regions distributed around the genome. Although AcMNPV infection-dependent plasmid replication was initiated by a single complete palindrome, the amount of replication was substantially increased in plasmids containing six or eight palindromes.

Baculoviridae↗
PubMed1992

Ectopic expression of ultraviolet-rhodopsins in the blue photoreceptor cells of Drosophila: visual physiology and photochemistry of transgenic animals.

We have generated transgenic flies expressing R7 cell-specific opsins in the major class of photoreceptor cells of the Drosophila retina and characterized their spectral properties using high-resolution microspectrophotometry and sensitivity recordings. We show that the Rh3 and Rh4 opsin genes encode UV-sensitive opsins with similar spectral properties (lambda max = 345 nm and 375 nm), and that Rh3 corresponds to the R7p and R7marg class of visual pigments. We have also generated Rh3 and Rh4 isoform-specific antibodies and present an R7 cell map of the Drosophila retina. In a related set of experiments, we show that it is possible to coexpress two different visual pigments functionally in the same cell and produce photoreceptors that display the summed spectral response of the individual pigments. These findings open up the possibility of tuning an animal's visual behavior by targeted expression of combinations of opsin genes to selective types of photoreceptors.

Animals↗