[Genome] cytobands in drosophila - how to know what is dark/light?

[Archana Thakkapallayil]

Hello Dr. Germán,

I forwarded your question to one of our developers and here is the response:

Unfortunately, we don't have this information -- FlyBase provides only the
coordinates of the bands.  To make the major bands visually distinct
in the ideogram image, we toggle the color every time the last letter
changes.  For example, 21B1, 21B2, ... 21B8 in the Chromosome Bands
track and 21B in the ideogram image will all have the same color; then
21C1, 21C2, ... and 21C in the ideogram image will all have the
alternate color.  So while we can make the bands visually distinct and
colored consistently between the ideogram (low-res) and the Chromosome
Bands track (high-res), our coloring unfortunately has no relationship
to band darkness.

Here are some references on the bands that might be helpful to you:

BRIDGES, C.B., 1935
Salivary chromosome maps. With a key to the banding of the chromosomes
of Drosophila melanogaster.
J. Heredity 26: 60-64.

BRIDGES, C.B., 1938
A revised map ofthe salivary gland X-chromosome of Drosophila
melanogaster.
J. Heredity 29: 11-13.

Also, our developers are looking into getting further information about 
this from the FlyBase. I will let you know when I get more information. 
In the meantime if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to 
contact us again.

Regards,

Archana
UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group 

German Leparc wrote:
> Dear UCSC browser,
>
> I have a graduate student here that would like to check if his
> drosophila genes fall into regions of either light or dark 
> chromosome cytobands, however, the tables for download only provide
> coordinates and name of the band,
> but the "gieStain" field does not have any information about the
> staining like the human and mouse data. When looking
> at the graphic browser, however, the bands are shown as either light or
> dark - how do you find this out?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Dr. Germán Gastón Leparc
> Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
> A-1190 Muthgasse 18
> Austria, Europe
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