A family of Turandot-related genes in the humoral stress response of Drosophila

The Drosophila Turandot A (TotA) gene was recently shown to encode a stress-induced humoral factor which gives increased resistance to the Lethal effects of high temperature. Here we show that TotA belongs to a family of eight Tot genes distributed at three different sites in the Drosophila genome. All Tot genes are induced under stressful conditions such as bacterial infection, heat shock, paraquat feeding or exposure to ultraviolet light, suggesting that all members of this family play a role in Drosophila stress tolerance. The induction of the Tot genes differs in important respects from the heat shock response, such as the strong but delayed response to bacterial infection seen for several of the genes. (C) 2001 Academic Press.