The Ski2-family helicase Obelus regulates Crumbs alternative splicing and cell polarity

We identified Obelus, a conserved Ski2-family DExD/H-box helicase in a screen for Drosophila mutants with defects in epithelial polarity and junctional organization. To identify the functional targets of Obelus we used RNA sequencing and compared the transcriptional and splicing profiles of staged wild-type embryos with obe1/obe2 and obe2/Df(3R)Exel6174 (obe2/Df) mutant embryos. Comparing the mRNA expression profiles from late stage 5/early stage 6 Drosophila embryos from Oregon-R (wild type), obe2/Df, obe1/obe2 in triplicate, using Illumina HiSeq2500.