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Null mutations in Drosophila Optomotor-blind affect T-domain residues conserved in all Tbx proteins

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Abstract

The T-box transcription factors TBX2 and TBX3 are overexpressed in many human cancers raising the need for a thorough understanding of the cellular function of these proteins. In Drosophila, there is one corresponding ortholog, Optomotor-blind (Omb). Currently, only two missense mutations are known for the two human proteins. Making use of the developmental defects caused by inactivation of omb, we have isolated and molecularly characterized four new omb mutations, three of them are missense mutations of amino acids fully conserved in all Tbx proteins. We interpret the functional defects in the framework of the known structure of the human TBX3 protein and provide evidence for loss of Omb DNA-binding activity in all three newly identified missense mutations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Bloomington Stock Center for Drosophila stocks, E. Jost for fly care, and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for grant Pf163/14-1.

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  1. Aditya Sen

    Present address: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, 20814, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Genetics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Becherweg 32, 55128, Mainz, Germany

    Aditya Sen, Christian Gadomski, Yasmin Abassi, Christian Dorner & Gert O. Pflugfelder

  2. Theodor Boveri-Institute, Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Jürgen Balles & Gert O. Pflugfelder

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  1. Aditya Sen
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  2. Christian Gadomski
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  3. Jürgen Balles
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  4. Yasmin Abassi
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  5. Christian Dorner
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  6. Gert O. Pflugfelder
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gert O. Pflugfelder.

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Communicated by T. Clandinin.

A. Sen and C. Gadomski contributed equally to this work.

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Sen, A., Gadomski, C., Balles, J. et al. Null mutations in Drosophila Optomotor-blind affect T-domain residues conserved in all Tbx proteins. Mol Genet Genomics 283, 147–156 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-009-0505-z

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