Open AccessDER signaling restricts the boundaries of the wing field during Drosophila development
Author(s) -
Antonio Baonza,
Fernando Roch,
Enrique Martı́n-Blanco
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.97.13.7331
Subject(s) - wing , imaginal disc , biology , engrailed , decapentaplegic , hox gene , drosophila (subgenus) , compartment (ship) , microbiology and biotechnology , arthropod , wnt signaling pathway , drosophila melanogaster , notch signaling pathway , signal transduction , evolutionary biology , anatomy , genetics , gene , transcription factor , ecology , homeobox , oceanography , geology , engineering , aerospace engineering
Arthropod and vertebrate limbs develop from secondary embryonic fields. In insects, the wing imaginal disk is subdivided early in development into the wing and notum subfields. The activity of the Wingless protein is fundamental for this subdivision and seems to be the first element of the hierarchy of regulatory genes promoting wing formation.Drosophila epidermal growth factor receptor (DER) signaling has many functions in fly development. Here we show that antagonizing DER signaling during the second larval instar leads to notum to wing transformations and wing mirror-image duplications. DER signaling is necessary for confining the wing subregion in the developing wing disk and for the specification of posterior identity. To do so, DER signaling acts by restricting the expression of Wingless to the dorsal-posterior quadrant of wing discs, suppressing wing-organizing activities, and by cooperating in the maintenance of Engrailed expression in posterior compartment cells.