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Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on September 14, 2008.
Genetics, Vol. 180, 1355-1365, November 2008, Copyright © 2008
doi:10.1534/genetics.108.092650
Components of the RNAi Machinery That Mediate Long-Distance Chromosomal Associations Are Dispensable for Meiotic and Early Somatic Homolog Pairing in Drosophila melanogaster
Justin P. Blumenstiel*,1,
Roxana Fu*,
,
William E. Theurkauf
and
R. Scott Hawley*,
* Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, Missouri, 64110, Program in Molecular Medicine and Program in Cell Dynamics, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts 01605, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri 64110 and Department of Physiology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas 66160
1 Corresponding author: 1200 Sunnyside Ave., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045.
E-mail: jblumens{at}ku.edu
Homolog pairing is indispensable for the proper segregation of chromosomes in meiosis but the mechanism by which homologs uniquely pair with each other is poorly understood. In Drosophila, somatic chromosomes also undergo full homolog pairing by an unknown mechanism. It has been recently demonstrated that both insulator function and somatic long-distance interactions between Polycomb response elements (PREs) are stabilized by the RNAi machinery in Drosophila. This suggests the possibility that long-distance pairing interactions between homologs, either during meiosis or in the soma, may be stabilized by a similar mechanism. To test this hypothesis, we have characterized meiotic and early somatic chromosome pairing of homologous chromosomes in flies that are mutant for various components of the RNAi machinery. Despite the identification of a novel role for the piRNA machinery in meiotic progression and synaptonemal complex (SC) assembly, we have found that the components of the RNAi machinery that mediate long-distance chromosomal interactions are dispensable for homologous chromosome pairing. Thus, there appears to be at least two mechanisms that bring homologous sequences together within the nucleus: those that act between dispersed homologous sequences and those that act to align and pair homologous chromosomes.
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Genetics 2008 180: NP.