Same tissue, different responses: How do different cells in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc respond to ionizing radiation and contribute to tissue homeostasis?
Keywords: h. other (Radiation/Stress Response); j. homeostasis
Tissues consist of highly organized cell populations which must mount coordinated responses to damaging stressors in order to maintain tissue viability. In the Drosophila wing imaginal disc, observations of coordinated homeostatic responses to diverse damaging events are abundant- however, the exact mechanisms of this coordination are not fully understood. Here we show that cells in the notum of the wing disc are resistant to ionizing radiation, and that they lose this resistance through developmental time. We also show that apoptosis in this region occurs independently of the JNK stress-signaling pathway, in contrast to other regions of the disc. Our results provide further evidence that different cell subpopulations in the wing disc, which are canonically considered to be of the same cell type, have strikingly heterogeneous responses to ionizing radiation and may contribute to total tissue response in specialized ways.