The Drosophila sgs3 gene: an in-vivo test of intron function

An intronless Drosophila melanogaster sgs3 "glue" gene from the Formosa strain was constructed and inserted by P element transformation into a strain carrying an sgs3 variant that produces a larger mRNA and protein. By comparing both the RNAs and proteins produced by the two alleles we show that the intron has no detectable effect on sgs3 expression.