Evaluating the Role of rtel In Synthesis-Dependent Strand Annealing in Drosophila melanogaster (2014)
Undergraduates: Christopher Rota, Lydia Morris, Susan McMahan
Faculty Advisor: Jeff Sekelsky
Department: Biology
Synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) is a DNA repair process closely associated with the generation of non-crossover outcomes during homologous recombination. Based on previous studies, Blm, the Bloom¿s syndrome helicase gene, is thought to be an essential regulator of SDSA. The purpose of my research is to evaluate another candidate regulator called rtel, the Drosophila ortholog of human RTEL-1, which is hypothesized to play a non-essential but significant role in SDSA repair. My study utilizes a novel genetic construct to measure levels of SDSA repair occurring in the brains of Blm and rtel mutant larvae through changes in cellular fluorescence. Successful SDSA repair of double-strand breaks in the construct result in a visible change in cell color from red to green. So far, results support the initial hypothesis and the assay has been found to be a useful in-vivo method of studying SDSA in Drosophila.