Blocking the Function of the Fruit Fly Rad51D Gene Using RNA Interference

Rad51 is a key gene responsible for homologous recombination during meiosis and DNA repair in eukaryotic organisms. In mammals it is helped by 5 related genes, called paralogs, which show differences in where they are expressed and which appear to have some novel functions on their own. One focus of our lab is to study the role of two of these paralogs, called Rad51D and XRCC2, in fruit flies. The goal of our project is to knock out the function of the fly Rad51D gene and see how it affects the development of the flies, their ability to undergo meiosis, and their response to drugs that damage DNA. We have helped to clone the Rad51D gene into a vector that will make a double-stranded RNA copy of this gene, which can then be used to block the expression of the Rad51D protein when injected into flies. We are currently injecting this DNA construct into fly embryos to create transformed flies which can be used for an analysis of Rad51D function.