Drosophila melanogaster plays an important role in molecular, genetic, and genomic studies of heredity, development, metabolism, behavior, and human disease. The initial reference genome sequence reported more than a decade ago had a profound impact on progress in Drosophila research, and improving the accuracy and completeness of this sequence continues to be important to further progress. We previously described improvement of the 117-Mb sequence in the euchromatic portion of the genome and 21 Mb in the heterochromatic portion, using a whole-genome shotgun assembly, BAC physical mapping, and clone-based finishing. Here, we report an improved reference sequence of the single-copy and middle-repetitive regions of the genome, produced using cytogenetic mapping to mitotic and polytene chromosomes, clone-based finishing and BAC fingerprint verification, ordering of scaffolds by alignment to cDNA sequences, incorporation of other map and sequence data, and validation by whole-genome optical restriction mapping. These data substantially improve the accuracy and completeness of the reference sequence and the order and orientation of sequence scaffolds into chromosome arm assemblies. Representation of the Y chromosome and other heterochromatic regions is particularly improved. The new 143.9-Mb reference sequence, designated Release 6, effectively exhausts clone-based technologies for mapping and sequencing. Highly repeat-rich regions, including large satellite blocks and functional elements such as the ribosomal RNA genes and the centromeres, are largely inaccessible to current sequencing and assembly methods and remain poorly represented. Further significant improvements will require sequencing technologies that do not depend on molecular cloning and that produce very long reads.

Salivary gland polytene chromosomes of Drosophila melanogaster have a reproducible set of intercalary heterochromatin (IH) sites, characterized by late DNA replication, underreplicated DNA, breaks and frequent ectopic contacts. The SuUR mutation has been shown to suppress underreplication, and wild-type SuUR protein is found at late-replicating IH sites and in pericentric heterochromatin. Here we show that the SuUR gene influences all four IH features. The SuUR mutation leads to earlier completion of DNA replication. Using transgenic strains with two, four or six additional SuUR(+) doses (4-8xSuUR(+)) we show that wild-type SuUR is an enhancer of DNA underreplication, causing many late-replicating sites to become underreplicated. We map the underreplication sites and show that their number increases from 58 in normal strains (2xSuUR(+)) to 161 in 4-8xSuUR(+) strains. In one of these new sites (1AB) DNA polytenization decreases from 100% in the wild type to 51%-85% in the 4xSuUR (+) strain. In the 4xSuUR(+) strain, 60% of the weak points coincide with the localization of Polycomb group (PcG) proteins. At the IH region 89E1-4 (the Bithorax complex), a typical underreplication site, the degree of underreplication increases with four doses of SuUR(+) but the extent of the underreplicated region is the same as in wild type and corresponds to the region containing PcG binding sites. We conclude that the polytene chromosome regions known as IH are binding sites for SuUR protein and in many cases PcG silencing proteins. We propose that these stable silenced regions are late replicated and, in the presence of SuUR protein, become underreplicated.

IntroductionTelomeres are specialized DNA-protein complexes that cap the termini of linear chromosomes. They compensate for incomplete DNA replication and contribute to the stability of chromosomes and karyotype (Muller, 1932;Pardue and Debaryshe, 1999;Biessmann and Mason, 2003). Telomeres also participate in nuclear architecture maintenance, and are known to associate with nuclear lamina (Hochstrasser et al., 1986;Marshall et al., 1996;Hari et al., 2001) or with nuclear matrix (de Lange, 1992;Luderus et al., 1996). However, the factors that underlie these phenomena, as well as the mechanisms of telomere functioning, remain poorly understood in Drosophila melanogaster.In eukaryotes, such as budding yeast, fission yeast and humans, telomeres are considered to be essentially heterochromatic (Perrod and Gasser, 2003). Heterochromatin is characterized by a high degree of DNA compaction, late replication in S phase, and by association with specific silencing proteins (Richards and Elgin, 2002). Intercalary (IH) and pericentric heterochromatin regions in many Diptera species are characterized by DNA underreplication and nonhomologous (ectopic) pairing of chromosomal regions in polytene chromosomes (Zhimulev, 1998). The question whether D. melanogaster telomeres are heterochromatic in

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Summary Proper control of DNA replication is essential to ensure faithful transmission of genetic material and to prevent chromosomal aberrations that can drive cancer progression and developmental disorders. DNA replication is regulated primarily at the level of initiation and is under strict cell cycle regulation. Importantly, DNA replication is highly influenced by developmental cues. In Drosophila, specific regions of the genome are repressed for DNA replication during differentiation by the SNF2 domain-containing protein SUUR through an unknown mechanism. We demonstrate that SUUR is recruited to active replication forks and mediates repression of DNA replication by directly inhibiting replication fork progression instead of functioning as a replication fork barrier. Mass-spec identification of SUUR associated proteins identified the replicative helicase member CDC45 as a SUUR-associated protein, supporting a role for SUUR directly at replication forks. Our results reveal that control of eukaryotic DNA copy number can occur through inhibition of replication fork progression.