Courtship and Visual Defects of cacophony Mutants Reveal Functional Complexity of a Calcium-Channel 1 Subunit in Drosophila

Corresponding author: Jeffrey C. Hall, Department of Biology, MS-008, Brandeis University, 451 South Street, Waltham, MA 02254-9110, hall{at}binah.cc.brandeis.edu (E-mail).

Communicating editor: C.-I WU

We show by molecular analysis of behavioral and physiological mutants that the Drosophila Dmca1A calcium-channel 1 subunit is encoded by the cacophony (cac) gene and that nightblind-A and lethal(1)L13 mutations are allelic to cac with respect to an expanded array of behavioral and physiological phenotypes associated with this gene. The cac^S mutant, which exhibits defects in the patterning of courtship lovesong and a newly revealed but subtle abnormality in visual physiology, is mutated such that a highly conserved phenylalanine (in one of the quasi-homologous intrapolypeptide regions called IIIS6) is replaced by isoleucine. The cac^H18 mutant exhibits defects in visual physiology (including complete unresponsiveness to light in certain genetic combinations) and visually mediated behaviors; this mutant (originally nbA^H18) has a stop codon in an alternative exon (within the cac ORF), which is differentially expressed in the eye. Analysis of the various courtship and visual phenotypes associated with this array of cac mutants demonstrates that Dmca1A calcium channels mediate multiple, separable biological functions; these correlate in part with transcript diversity generated via alternative splicing.

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