Cooperative Regulation of Growth by defective proventriculus and yorkie in the Drosophila eye

Cooperative Regulation of Growth by defective proventriculus and yorkie in the Drosophila eye

Presenter(s)

Arushi Rai, Rohith Basavanahalli Nanjundaiah

Comments

Presentation: 1:15-2:30 p.m., Kennedy Union Ballroom

Description

The developing eye of Drosophila is a well-established model for studying developmental geneticprocesses and growth regulation. The developmental genetic networks discovered in Drosophilaare highly conserved in all animals including higher mammals. Axial patterning precedesdifferentiation in the Drosophila eye which begins from a ventral equivalent state. The dorsal fate isestablished by onset of expression of the GATA-family transcription factor Pannier (Pnr), and otherdorsal-specific genes like Iroquois (Iro-C) family proteins. Our long-term goal is to understand themolecular basis of Dorsal-Ventral patterning and growth in the eye by interactions of the dorsalselector genes and growth regulatory genes. We recently identified defective proventriculus (dve)as a candidate for dorsal-ventral eye patterning that act as a transcriptional repressor that binds tothe K50 site. Gain of function of Dve, results in eye suppression, while loss of function of dve,exhibits dramatic eye enlargement phenotypes which raised an interesting question, whether thedorsal patterning gene dve, apart from its main function of specifying cells fate, plays a dual role inregulating growth during eye development in Drosophila? Dve may interact with the Hippo growthregulatory pathway to control patterning and growth of the eye. We tested the interactions betweenHippo pathway and dorsal-ventral patterning using the GAL4-UAS system. We tested if thesepathways act independently to control eye patterning and growth or act via shared targets andregulatory interactions. In this context we investigated the effect of overexpressing Yorkie (theeffector of the Hippo pathway) and Dve during larval development specifically in the dorsoventraldomains of the eye imaginal discs. Over expression of Yki extends the Dve domain in the eye discas a result of which the disc growth is enlarged, and suppresses eye differentiation, therebysuggesting that these two distinct genes may regulate a common downstream target to control thedisc growth and differentiation. We have tested wingless (wg) a known and conserved Hippodownstream target for Dve and Yki mediated effects using reporter assays, and qRT-PCR- basedapproaches and our results will be discussed.

Publication Date

4-19-2023

Project Designation

Independent Research

Primary Advisor

Madhuri Kango-Singh, Amit Singh

Primary Advisor's Department

Biology

Keywords

Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

Cooperative Regulation of Growth by defective proventriculus and yorkie in the Drosophila eye

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