A deleted hobo element is involved in the unstable thermosensitive vgal mutation at the vestigial locus in Drosophila melanogaster

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Abstract
Summary: We have described a new unstable mutant of the vestigial locus isolated from a natural population. From this mutant, vestigialalmost (vgal), wild-type (vgal+), and extreme (vgext), alleles arose spontaneously. The molecular analysis of vgal shows that the mutation is due to a 1874 bp hobo element inserted in a vestigial intron. Two distinct kinds of events lead a wild-type phenotype. Three independent vgal+ alleles result from an excision of the hobo element and two other vgal+ alleles have further deletions of hobo sequence. The sequence of one of them shows a 1516 bp hobo insertion at the same place and in the same orientation as the 1874 bp insertion. In the vgext alleles, we found a 5′ or 3′ variably sized deletion of vg sequences. One of them, which has been cloned and sequenced, has a deletion finishing exactly at the left terminal repeat′ hobo element. The genetic implications of these different genetic structures are discussed.