The apterous gene in Drosophila encodes a protein required for wing patterning and growth. It is also known to function in nerve development, fertility, and viability. When human and mouse genes whose protein products closely resemble apterous were used to generate transgenic Drosophila [Rincon-Limas et al. (1999). Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA) 96:2165–2170], the apterous mutant phenotype was rescued. In addition, the whole-body expression patterns in the transgenic Drosophila were similar to normal apterous.

What is meant by the term rescued in this context?

Video transcript

Welcome back. Let's look at our next question. It says wingless is classified as what kind of gene we've got choices of gap gene pair rule, gene segment, polarity gene and homoerotic gene. This can be a little confusing because we know that often genes are named after their effect. Like what happens when you delete the gene. So if I didn't recall off the top of my head, what kind of gene this was and saw the name wingless. I might assume that the deletion of this gene or mutation of this gene would cause a fly to develop without wings. So it might be tempting to choose home ionic jeans. Since we know the homoerotic genes direct the development of the destiny of the cells in each segment to become the structures they will in the future. But wingless is actually a segment polarity jean choice C. So it's useful to know of the different types of genes. Some examples, some common examples of each one and the wingless gene as a segment segment polarity gene helps to establish anterior posture orientation within a segment. It's involved in directing the development of epithelial tubules. Excuse me. And these epithelial tubules are part of the establishment of that anterior posterior orientation that's also involved in directing wing hair formation. And these cells elongating a determined direction as part of wing development. So that's its connection with wing development there as evidenced by the name wingless. So let's look at our other cancers answer choices to understand why they're not correct. As we said, we rule out choice d homoerotic gene as wingless is one of the segmentation genes, not homoerotic gene. And then choice a gap gene that is a segmentation gene. But it's the one that is part of the first development of just the division of embryo into basic segments. So not wingless is not a member of that group. And then choice be the pair rule gene. That's another segmentation gene and just involved in directing the development of segments that will occur in pairs, but wingless is not part of that group. So that's not an answer choice. So again, wingless is classified as what kind of gene choice? C a segment polarity jean. See you in the next video.