Journal Club 9/15/11 – Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus (1980)
We will be discussing the following paper:
Nusslein-Volhard, C. and E. Wieschaus (1980). “Mutations affecting segment number and polarity in Drosophila.” Nature 287(5785): 795-801. (Nusslein-Volhard1980)
Some other papers that might be of interest are:
Nusslein-Volhard, C., E. Wieschaus, et al. (1984). “Mutations Affecting the Pattern of the Larval Cuticle in Drosophila-Melanogaster .1. Zygotic Loci on the 2nd Chromosome.” Wilhelm Rouxs Archives of Developmental Biology 193(5): 267-282. (Nusslein-Volhard1984-Part1, Nusslein-Volhard1984-Part2)
We’ll try to include talking points in this post before our meeting. It could be fun to have everybody participating in putting together those talking points.
Some interesting things to discuss:
- How do you screen for lethal mutants? What’s a good crossing scheme? Why are balancers key here?
- What’s the difference between an allele and a locus?
- Why do they talk about homeotic genes? What’s the difference between determining the existence and positioning of a segment and its identity?
- How can you tell which segment you lost if you can’t see it?
- When you do a screen how do you know when to give up, when you’ve seen most of the stuff there is to see? This is shown in fig. 5 of the 1984 paper.
Chromosomal mapping:
During our discussions the work by Sturtevant and Morgan came up. Here’s a link to the paper with an explanation of their reasoning and the genetic details. It’s fun to try to generate your own map from their data!