Two major RNA products are transcribed from heat-shock locus 93D of Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The heat-shock locus 93D from Drosophila melanogaster has recently become available for a molecular analysis. We established a restriction site map of a recombinant DNA clone covering the major part of heat-shock locus 93D. This clone includes part of a repetitive Taq I region and neighbouring unique sequences. The portion of the Taq I repeat analysed consists of tandemly arranged sequence blocks of about 280 base pairs (bp) in length. Using genomic and cDNA as hybridization probes we examined the transcription of 93D in 2- to 4-day-old flies. We identified two major RNA classes enhanced after heat shock, namely nonpolyadenylated transcripts of heterogeneous length derived from the repetitive region and one discrete polyadenylated transcript in spliced and unspliced form from the neighbouring unique region. The occurrence of a highly heterogeneous poly(A)- transcript and high levels of an unspliced discrete poly(A)+ species suggests unusual mechanisms of transcription regulation in the 93D region.