Are you ready for Halloween?
While most people are trying to figure out costumes… ever wonder what might a Drosophila geneticist might be thinking of during Halloween?
The Halloween Genes of course!
In Drosophila development, there is a family of genes called Halloween Genes (how appropriate for it being Halloween today!) The members of the family are: spook, spookier, phantom, disembodied, shadow and shade.
Are you scared yet?
These genes encode for enzymes (cytochrome P450) in a pathway involved in synthesizing steroids of shedding the exoskeleton on insects and arthropods called ecdysteroidogenic pathway.
Just the name of the pathway is scary to me!
So how did these genes get their names? (Apart from the pathway name being scary)
When one of these genes is mutated, it disrupts Drosophila development and results in an abnormal exoskeleton formation (quite possibly making the flies look a bit scary à hence called Halloween genes). Unfortunately, a mutation caused by these genes not only disrupting the exoskeleton formation but due to this it causes lethality (more of a reason to be scared!)
So next year when you are thinking of what to be for Halloween… consider dressing up as the Halloween Gene family.
Be ready to spook (no pun intended)!
Happy Halloween!
What it means to everyone else… vs What it means to a geneticist… a signal transduction of the ecdysteroidogenic pathway where all the Halloween genes play a role.
~CellebraTez
General references
Gilbert L.I. (2004). Halloween genes encode P450 enzymes that mediate steroid hormone biosynthesis in Drosophila melanogaster, Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology, 215(1-2) 1-10. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mce.2003.11.003
wikipedia.org
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