Different aubergine alleles confirm the specificity of different RNAi pathways in Drosophila melanogaster

The crystal-Stellate system is one of the best-known examples of heterochromatin-euchromatin interaction. The components of this system are homologous repetitive sequences clustered in three regions: 12E1 and h27 on the X and h11 on the Y. The symptom of a disrupted crystal-Stellate interaction is the presence of crystals in the spermatocytes of males lacking the crystal region. Stellate silencing is based on the RNAi process. Many modifiers of this system have been isolated and many of these are involved in RNAi. One of these modifiers is aubergine(sting); this is a "gain of function" allele in somatic tissues. Here we report the different behavior of two aubergine alleles with respect to the RNAi pathway: aub(sting) and a "loss of function" heteroallelic combination aub(HN)/aub(QC42). An increased amount of Aub interferes with the correct functioning of the somatic yellow hairpin RNAi, whereas the Aub reduction does not. We also demonstrate the different behavior of these alleles on the I transposon silencing in ovaries. Intriguingly, neither of these aubergine alleles silence the Stellate locus. We can conclude that the crystal-Stellate system reveals different RNAi pathways even though much still remains to be done to completely explain the molecular bases of the crystal-Stellate interaction.