Behavior and Ethology Commons^™

Investigating The Biological Function Of Female-Specific Fruitless Transcripts, Liam Mcfarlane

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

In Drosophila, the fruitless (fru) gene encodes an array of alternatively spliced transcription factors, some of which are sex-specifically spliced. The male-specific transcript (fru^M) has been previously determined to be involved in male courtship behaviours. The female counterpart (fru^F) however, has been assumed to have no function due to the incorporation of a stop codon near the 5' end of the transcript. Interestingly, RNAseq data shows that expression levels of fru^F in females exceeds that of fru^M in males in the brain and thoracoabdominal ganglion, bringing to …