Genetic modifiers of ectopic eye formation in Drosophila melanogaster wing

Kopyl S.A., Dubatolova T.D., Volkova E.I., Omelyanchuk L.V.

SUMMARY. Ectopic expression of a master gene ey by GAL4-UAS system can induce ectopic eye formation in different organs. Formation of ectopic eyes takes place in the defined regions of imaginal discs which partially overlap with regions responsible for transdetermination of differentiated cells (essentially meaning alteration of the cell fate). In this way, ectopic eye induction could be considered as a model for cellular plasticity studies. In the present work we looked for transgenes whose ectopic co-expression with the master gene ey induced morphologic changes of the ectopic eyes on the wing compared to sole expression of ey. Most of the transgenes found to affect the size of ectopic eyes belonged to the class of vesicular trafficking genes capable to affect different signaling pathways. Ectopic expression of the revealed transgenes in the wing and eye discs altered the morphology of both the normal wings and normal eyes. We argue that the effect of these genes may be that they change the size of the region responsible for cell fate transdetermination.

Key words: genetic modifier, ectopic eye, transgene, transdetermination, cell fate, cell plasticity

Tsitologiya i Genetika 2013, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 19-28

E-mail: ome mcb.nsc.ru

Kopyl S.A., Dubatolova T.D., Volkova E.I., Omelyanchuk L.V. Genetic modifiers of ectopic eye formation in Drosophila melanogaster wing, Tsitol Genet., 2013, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 19-28.