The scarlet eye colour gene of the tephritid fruit fly: Bactrocera tryoni and the nature of two eye colour mutations.

A homologue of the Drosophila melanogaster eye-colour gene, scarlet (st), has been isolated from the genome of the tephritid fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni. The comparison of the B. tryoni and D. melanogaster scarlet gene shows 71.2% and 79.3% sequence identity at the DNA and the derived amino acid level, respectively. Two allelic eye-colour mutations of B. tryoni, orange-eyes and lemon-eyes, have been recovered and found to be colocalized with the st gene. The st gene sequence in the two mutant strains has been examined for DNA sequence changes and expression levels.