High impact information on vir

• virilizer regulates Sex-lethal in the germline of Drosophila melanogaster [1].
• Besides its role in Sxl splicing, vir is essential for male and female viability and is also required for the production of eggs capable of embryonic development [2].
• Significant reductions of mI and mII inclusion were also observed in heterozygotes for loss-of-function alleles of virilizer, fl(2)d, and crooked neck [3].

Biological context of vir

• The continuous production of SXL proteins in XX animals is maintained by autoregulation and depends on virilizer (vir) [1].
• However, vir must be active in the female germline to allow normal embryonic development because maternal products of vir are required for the early post-transcriptional regulation of Sxl in XX embryos and for a vital process in embryos of both sexes [1].
• We found that XX germ cells mutant for vir, in contrast to cells mutant for Sxl, perform oogenesis [1].
• The gene virilizer is required for female-specific splicing controlled by Sxl, the master gene for sexual development in Drosophila [4].
• Co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry results indicate that SXL and FL (2)D form a complex and that the protein VIRILIZER and a Ran-binding protein implicated in protein nuclear import are also present in complexes containing FL (2)D [5].

Other interactions of vir

• We also found that none of the three genes, snf, virilizer, and fl(2)d, which when mutated alter the female-specific processing of Sxl-Pm transcripts, alter the generation of the early splice [6].

References