Jm. Delpuech et al., NONINVOLVEMENT OF THE LONG TERMINAL REPEAT OF TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENT 17.6 IN INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE IN DROSOPHILA, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 90(12), 1993, pp. 5643-5647
Waters and colleagues recently suggested [Waters, L. C., Zelhof, A. C.
, Shaw, B. J. & Ch'ang, L.-Y. (1992) Proc. Nad. Acad. Sci. USA 89, 485
5-4859] that an insertion of a long terminal repeat of transposable el
ement 17.6 into the 3' untranslated region of a P450 gene leads to sus
ceptibility to the insecticide DDT in Drosophila melanogaster. We test
ed this hypothesis by screening lines from around the world and found
that the presence or absence of a long terminal repeat was uncorrelate
d with resistance in 31 strains of D. melanogaster and Drosophila simu
lans. Thus we must reject the hypothesis that the insertion of a long
terminal repeat leads to DDT susceptibility in Drosophila.