Lab Members:

Lisa Petrella

Contact Information:

Genetics Department        
Yale School of Medicine, SHM I-362 
333 Cedar Street
New Haven, CT 06520

Telephone:  (203) 737-2953
Email: lisa.petrella@yale.edu

Education:

Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA
B.S. Molecular Biology 2000

Yale University, New Haven, CT
Ph.D Candidate, Genetics Department

Research Interests:

Analysis of hu-li tai shao in the germline

Drosophila oogenesis takes place in a sixteen cell germ line cyst that is made up of 15 nurse cells interconnected to each other and the oocyte by intercellular bridges termed ring canals. Ring canals serve as a channel through which the nurse cells provide the oocyte with proteins and RNA. These cysts are formed in the most anterior region of the ovary called the germarium. Here stem cells divide to form a cystocyte, which then undergoes four rounds of synchronized, incomplete mitotic division. The fusome is a germline-specific organelle that exists only in the cysts in the germarium and is important for cyst polarity and oocyte specification. The germarium is also the site of ring canal stabilization through the addition of filamentous actin as the fusome is disappearing. The hu-li tai shao (hts) gene was found as a female sterile mutant in a P-element screen in Drosophila. hts mutants show a loss of the fusome, abnormal ring canals, loss of oocyte specification, and two few nurse cells. hts has a least four sliceforms that are differentially expressed in germline and somatic cells during oogenesis. Work in our lab has shown that the ovhts protein isoform is localized to the fusome and that the cleaved C-terminus is localized at ring canals. To investigate hts function we are using a new hts frameshift mutation that results in truncation before the ring canal domain. Here we show that although the ring canal domain does not appear to be localized to the fusome by either antibody staining or a GFP-fusion transgene it may be necessary for fusome formation.