These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Direct flight muscles in Drosophila develop from cells with characteristics of founders and depend on DWnt-2 for their correct patterning.
    Author: Kozopas KM, Nusse R.
    Journal: Dev Biol; 2002 Mar 15; 243(2):312-25. PubMed ID: 11884040.
    Abstract:
    The direct flight muscles (DFMs) of Drosophila allow for the fine control of wing position necessary for flight. In DWnt-2 mutant flies, certain DFMs are either missing or fail to attach to the correct epithelial sites. Using a temperature-sensitive allele, we show that DWnt-2 activity is required only during pupation for correct DFM patterning. DWnt-2 is expressed in the epithelium of the wing hinge primordium during pupation. This expression is in the vicinity of the developing DFMs, as revealed by expression of the muscle founder cell-specific gene dumbfounded in DFM precursors. The observation that a gene necessary for embryonic founder cell function is expressed in the DFM precursors suggests that these cells may have a similar founder cell role. Although the expression pattern of DWnt-2 suggests that it could influence epithelial cells to differentiate into attachment sites for muscle, the expression of stripe, a transcription factor necessary for epithelial cells to adopt an attachment cell fate, is unaltered in the mutant. Ectopic expression of DWnt-2 in the wing hinge during pupation can also create defects in muscle patterning without alterations in stripe expression. We conclude that DWnt-2 promotes the correct patterning of DFMs through a mechanism that is independent of the attachment site differentiation initiated by stripe.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]