Expression of the zygotic genome in blastoderm stage embryos ofDrosophila: Analysis of a specific protein.

The synthesis of a protein which has been detected in blastoderm cells but not in pole cells (Gutzeit and Gehring 1979) has been studied further by means of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. This protein could not be detected at the nuclear multiplication stage. The protein is translated from mRNA which is transcribed at the blastoderm stage since it is not synthesized in detectable amounts when embryos are injected with α-amanitin prior to the blastoderm stage. Also the protein could not be detected when RNA from freshly laid eggs was translated in vitro. Embryos from females which are homozygous for the mutationmat (3) 1 form pole cells but no blastoderm cells (Rice and Garen 1975). Thesemat (3) 1 embryos, as we will call them in this report, express the protein if aged for a period of time sufficient for completion of blastoderm cell formation in control wild-type embryos.mat (3) 1 embryos and embryos injected with α-amanitin show the same syndrome of visible developmental anomalies; however, the studied protein could only be detected inmat (3) 1 embryos but not in α-amanitin injected embryos.