Analysis of the trithorax Group (trxG) genes ash2 and ash1 wing imaginal disc transcriptomes.

The absent, small or homeotic discs 2 (ash2) gene, a member of the trithorax Group (trxG) of transcriptional regulators, is functionally related to ash1. However, ASH2 and ASH1 belong to distinct multimeric complexes of unknown composition and it is unclear how they act to regulate transcription. In this study, examination of gene expression profiles in wing imaginal discs from ash2 and ash1 mutants revealed their transcriptomes are very similar and correlate with wing phenotypes. Keywords: loss of function analysis Wing imaginal discs from alleles ash2^I1, ash2^112411 and ash1^22 were dissected. Four microarrays were hybridized for each experiment (total of 12 experiments) in biological replicate pairs, such that the total RNA from the sample used as a starting material came from different extractions. Both arrays from each pair were hybridized with the same amplified RNA from sample and common reference (obtained using the Amino-Allyl Messageamp II aRNA Amplification Kit from Ambion, Inc) but with dyes (Cy3 and Cy5 from Amersham, Inc) swapped to take dye-bias into account.