Amino acid sequence, expression pattern, and mutant alleles of parkin. (A) Alignment of the amino acid sequences of Drosophila Parkin (D-Park) with human Parkin (H-Park). The N-terminal ubiquitin-like domain (boxed), RING finger domains (boxed and shaded), and In-Between Ring domain (shaded) are designated. (B) Northern blot analysis of poly(A)+ RNA obtained from wild-type embryos (E), third-instar larvae (L), and adults (A) using a parkin-specific probe. Size units are in kilobases. Adult flies appear to express a larger, less abundant parkin transcript in addition to the major transcript of 1.7 kb. (C) Molecular map of the parkin transcript showing the parkEP(3)LA1 insertion, the breakpoints of the three parkin deletion alleles described in this work, and the locations of the parkin point mutations. The bent arrow represents the predicted transcription initiation site of parkin and the black boxes designate Parkin protein-coding sequences. The arrow above the parkEP(3)LA1 insertion designates the orientation of this P element.