Effects of Chromatin Structure Modifiers on the trans-Acting Heterochromatin Position Effect in Drosophila melanogaster

The heterochromatin position effect is manifested in the inactivation of euchromatin genes transferred to heterochromatin. In chromosomal rearrangements, genes located near the new eu-heterochromatin boundary in the rearrangement (cis-inactivation) and, in rare cases, genes of a region of the normal chromosome homologous to the region of the eu-heterochromatin boundary of the chromosome with the rearrangement (trans-inactivation) are subject to inactivation. The In(2)A4 inversion is able to trans-inactivate the UAS-eGFP reporter gene located on the normal chromosome. We knockdown a number of chromatin proteins using temperature-controlled RNA interference and investigated the effect of knockdown on trans-inactivation of the reporter. We found suppression of trans-inactivation by knockdowns of Su(var)2-HP2, a protein that binds to the key heterochromatin protein HP1a, SAYP, a subunit of the chromatin remodelling complex, and Eggless histone methyltransferase (SETDB1), which introduces a H3K9me3 histone mark, recognized by the HP1a protein. The method of studying the effects of gene knockdown on heterochromatin position effects presented in this work is of independent methodological interest.