Evaluating the Role of RTEL in Synthesis-Dependent Strand Annealing in D. melanogaster

Synthesis-dependent strand annealing (SDSA) is a DNA repair pathway responsible for the generation of a significant fraction of non-crossover outcomes during homologous recombination. Based on previous studies, Blm, the Bloom’s syndrome helicase gene, is thought to be a critical promoter of SDSA in Drosophila. The purpose of my research is to evaluate a candidate gene called rtel, the Drosophila ortholog of human RTEL1, which is hypothesized to play a significant role in SDSA repair based on research in other model organisms, although less significant than that of Blm. My study utilizes a novel genetic construct to measure levels of SDSA repair occurring in mitotic cells in the brains of Blm and rtel mutant larvae through changes in cellular fluorescence. Successful SDSA repair of double-strand breaks in the construct results in a visible change in cell color from red to green. I found an extremely significant (P