Priority Research Paper Volume 1, Issue 11 pp 903—936

Drosophila melanogaster p53 has developmental stage-specific and sex-specific effects on adult life span indicative of sexual antagonistic pleiotropy

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Figure 1. Summaryof Drosophila p53 locus, mutations, transgenes and life span effects. (A) Diagram of p53 locus and major protein product Dmp53. The p53 gene is indicated in blue, including the two promoters, indicated by black arrows. The internal intron/exon structure of p53 is omitted here for clarity, but is shown below in (B). The pink arrows in indicate the genes that flank p53 on the 5' and 3' side, genes CG17119 and CG17121, respectively. The orange arrow indicates the gustatory receptor gene Gr94a, located in the p53 intron. The 385 aa Dmp53 protein is diagrammed using black and gray boxes, including the N-terminal transcriptional activation domain, the central DNA binding domain, and the C-terminal oligomerization domain and basic region. (B) Diagram of endogenous p53 transcripts and mutations. The intron/exon structure of the A and B variant transcripts is indicated. The Gr94a gene is indicated in orange with an arrow indicating orientation. The location of insertion of the P element P{EPgy2}p53EY14108 in the second exon of the B isoform is indicated by a triangle, with an arrow indicating the orientation of the insert. The lower black bracket indicates the breakpoints of the 3.3kb deletion in the p53[5A-1-4] mutation. (C) Diagram of transgenic p53 constructs. (D) Summary of p53 effects on adult life span. The effect on adult life span of p53 wild type (A variant) over-expression during larval development and in adults is diagrammed: Bars represent negative effects of p53 wild-type on adult life span, while arrows represent positive effects on adult life span; thickness of the lines indicates relative strength of the effect. "Sum effect of p53" is the expected summation of effects of p53 on adult life span, which is consistent with the life span phenotype of p53 null mutation (p53-/-), as indicated.