Genetic requirements of vestigial in the regulation of Drosophila wing development

The gene vestigial has been proposed to act as a master gene because of its supposed capacity to initiate and drive wing development. We show that the ectopic expression of vestigial only induces ectopic outgrowths with wing cuticular differentiation and wing blade gene expression patterns in specif...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Baena-López, Luis Alberto, García-Bellido, Antonio
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2003
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositório:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/48351
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/48351
Access Level:Acesso embargado
Palavra-chave:Drosophila
Vestigial
Wing development
Inductive assimilation
Cellular identity
Mixed tissues
Descrição
Resumo:The gene vestigial has been proposed to act as a master gene because of its supposed capacity to initiate and drive wing development. We show that the ectopic expression of vestigial only induces ectopic outgrowths with wing cuticular differentiation and wing blade gene expression patterns in specific developmental and genetic contexts. In the process of transformation, wingless seems to be an essential but insufficient co-factor of vestigial. vestigial ectopic expression alone or vestigial plus wingless co-expression in clones differentiate `mixed' cuticular patterns (they contain wing blade trichomes and chaetae characteristic of the endogenous surrounding tissue) and express wing blade genes only in patches of cells within the clones. In addition, we have found that these clones, in the wing imaginal disc, may cause autonomous as well as non-autonomous cuticular transformations and wing blade gene expression patterns. These non-autonomous effects in surrounding cells result from recruitment or `inductive assimilation' of vestigial or wingless-vestigial overexpressing cells.