Cell
Volume 54, Issue 5, 26 August 1988, Pages 723-733
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Article
Isolation of a putative phospholipase c gene of drosophila, norpA, and its role in phototransduction

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(88)80017-5Get rights and content

Summary

Severe norpA mutations in Drosophila eliminate the photoreceptor potential and render the fly completely blind. Recent biochemical analyses have shown that norpA mutants lack phospholipase C (PLC) activity in the eye. A combination of chromosomal walking and transposon-mediated mutagenesis was used to clone the norpA gene. This gene encodes a 7.5 kb RNA that is expressed in the adult head. In situ hybridizations of norpA cDNA to adult tissue sections show that this gene is expressed abundantly in the retina. The putative norpA protein is composed of 1095 amino acid residues and has extensive sequence similarity to a PLC amino acid sequence from bovine brain. We suggest that the norpA gene encodes a PLC expressed in the eye of Drosophila and that PLC is an essential component of the Drosophila phototransduction pathway.

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    Present address: Department of Biological Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205.

    §

    Present address: Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 01239.

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