Gene expression of fly testes with meiotic arrest from different mutations

The role of different proteins, Always Early (Aly), Spermatocyte Arrest (Sa), Ubi-p63E (Magn) on the gene expression in spermatocyte differentation was assessed by microarray ABSTRACT: The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) regulates many biological pathways by posttranslationally ubiquitinating proteins for degradation. Although maintaining a dynamic balance between free ubiquitin and ubiquitinated proteins is key to UPS function, the mechanisms that regulate ubiquitin homeostasis in different tissues through development are not clear. Here we show that loss of function of Drosophila magellan (magn), the polyubiquitin Ubi-p63E, results in specifically meiotic arrest sterility in males. Expression of ubiquitin from magn/Ubi-p63E contributes predominantly to maintaining the free ubiquitin pool in testes. Function of magn/Ubip63E is required cell autonomously for proper meiotic chromatin condensation, cell cycle progression and spermatid differentiation. magn/Ubi-p63E mutant germ cells develop normally to the spermatocyte stage but arrest at the G2/M transition of meiosis I with lack of protein expression of key meiotic cell cycle regulators Boule and Cyclin B. Loss of function of magn/Ubi-p63E did not strongly affect the spermatocyte transcription program regulated by the tTAF and tMAC genes. Knocking down proteasome function specifically in spermatocytes caused a different meiotic arrest phenotype, suggesting that the magn/Ubi-p63E phenotype may not result from general defects in protein degradation. Our results suggest a conserved role of polyubiquitin genes in male meiosis and a potential mechanism leading to meiosis I maturation arrest. RNA was obtained from whole testes of flies with following mutations: 1) aly[2]/aly[5p], 2) sa[1]/sa[2], 3) magn[12c]/magn[23b] or magn[12c]/magn[12c];pSC2, 4) red[1], e[1] (WT). Each genotype had three biological replicates except magn which had four total biological replicates, two from magn[12c]/[23b] and two from [12c]/[12c]; pSC2