P Elements in Drosophila

Updated 7 June 1996

William R. Engels
Genetics Department, University of Wisconsin
445 Henry Mall, Madison, WI 53706 USA

This review is modified and updated from a chapter in Transposable Elements, (1996) pp. 103-123 edited by H. Saedler and A. Gierl. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

• P Elements in Drosophila
  • Introduction
  • 1. P Element Structure
  • 2. Hybrid Dysgenesis
  • 3. Population Biology
  • 4. Transposition
    • 4.1 Insertion site preference
    • 4.2 Transposase
    • 4.3 Fate of the donor site
  • 5. Regulation of P element mobility
    • 5.1 Tissue specificity
    • 5.2 Cytotype and repressors
      • 5.2.1 Type I repressor
      • 5.2.2 Type II repressor elements
  • 6. P elements as molecular biological tools
    • 6.1 Mutagenesis
    • 6.2 P element mediated transformation
    • 6.3 Enhancer trapping
    • 6.4 P vectors for transgene expression
    • 6.5 P vectors for site-specific recombination
    • 6.6 Gene replacement
    • 6.7 Making flanking deletions
  • 7. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgment

Here are some other relevant web sites:

• mariner, another Drosophila transposable element
• FlyBase, the main database for Drosophila information
• BDGP = Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project
• FlyView
• Virtual Flylab
• Gera rd Manning's Drosophila Community WWW Pages & Resources