Comparison of the sevenless genes of Drosophila virilis and Drosophila melanogaster.

Abstract
The sevenless gene of Drosophila melanogaster encodes a transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor required for normal eye development. We report here the isolation and DNA sequence analysis of the sevenless gene from Drosophila virilis. The predicted amino acid sequences of the sevenless proteins from these two species, which diverged .apprxeq. 60 million years ago, are compared.