Vol.30 No.3 (2008 June): 329-332

Roles of the Bag-of-marbles of Drosophila in the Differentiation of Germline Stem Cell and the Gametogenesis

Shi-You Wang, Yao-Zhou Zhang*

(Institute of Biochemistry, College of Life Science, Zhejiang Sci-Tech Uniwersity, Hangzhou 310018, China)

Abstract Bag-of-marbles (Bam) is a regulatory factor during gametogenesis in Drosophila, which shows no significant homology to other known proteins. The bam gene has not been identified in other species since it was cloned from Drosophila in 1990. Recent researches show that Bam plays different roles in oogenesis and spermatogenesis. In female Drosophila, Bam regulates the differentiation from the germline stem cell to cystoblast, and also promotes incomplete cytokinesis in the cystoblast. However, in male Drosophila, Bam is responsible for the transition of spermatogonium from mitosis to meiois.

Key words Bam; germline stem cell; differentiation

Received: December 6, 2007 Accepted: February 21, 2008
This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No.2005CB121006), the National Key Technologies R&D Program (No.2006BAI01B04), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30670095), and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (No.Z204267)
*Corresponding author. Tel/Fax: 86-571-86843198, E-mail: yaozhou@chinagene.com