This POWRE award permits Dr. Wolfner to spend a sabbatic semester in two leading labs at the University of California, San Diego. She will generate reagents and obtain training in techniques that will propel both projects in her lab into new, important areas. She will also bring new technologies back to Cornell. To advance her studies of seminal-fluid proteins that induce egg-laying, sperm storage, and life-span changes in mated Drosophila females, Dr. Wolfner will screen a Dr. Charles Zuker's large collection of mutants for mutations in seminal-fluid-protein genes. The mutants' phenotypes will pinpoint those genes on which to focus her future molecular studies. She will also screen for mutations that overcome the need for a seminal-fluid protein in sperm storage, to obtain a genetic "handle" on the receptor for this sperm-storage protein. Because of the size and nature of the Zuker collection, it would be prohibitive to carry out equivalent screens in Dr. Wolfner's lab. To extend her studies of "YA", the nuclear lamina protein essential for post-meiotic nuclear behaviors, in John Newport's lab Dr. Wolfner will learn the Xenopus nuclear-assembly system and use it to test whether purified YA can assemble into nuclear envelopes in vitro. Drosophila nuclear-assembly assays are not amenable to this sort of study, and their components are less well understood. In the future, Dr. Wolfner plans to use the Xenopus assay to define YA's function and targeting signals in vitro. While at UCSD, she will also screen the Zuker collection for mutations that compensate for lack of YA, thereby identifying genes whose products act with YA or in related biochemical processes.
