During organismal development, some genes occupy the top of a gene regulatory network, orchestrating the development of a certain tissue type or organ. These genes are often called “master regulator genes”. One such gene is vestigial (vg), which is often considered ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’ to orchestrate the formation of wings (i.e. wing master gene). When misexpressed in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, vg induces the formation of ectopic wing tissue in various non-wing tissues, such as legs, antennae, and the genital plate. Interestingly, despite the “master” status of this gene, vg does not appear to be able to induce wings “everywhere”. It has been demonstrated that vg requires additional factors (such as evolutionarily conserved growth factor signals, Dpp and Wg) to induce wing tissues. However, it is still elusive if these additive factors account for all of the regions that cannot gain wing identity after vg misexpression. We hypothesized that there also are factors that antagonize the action of vg in inducing wings. In this project, we aim to identify such repressive factors through precise visualization of where exactly ectopic wings are formed when vg is uniformly misexpressed in the leg-related tissues. We are currently working to establish a fly strain that allows us to fluorescently label tissues that acquire wing identity (wing reporters), while misexpressing vg in the leg-related tissues. This system will reveal where vg “cannot” induce wing tissues, which help us identify factors that might prevent vg from inducing wings.
Authors: Erin Stitzlein and Sydne Price
Faculty Advisors: Yoshinori Tomoyasu and Kevin Deem, Department of Biology
You must be logged in to post a comment.