View Program - 63rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference

Early large scale tissue remodeling often happens concomitantly in neighboring tissues in embryos. In Drosophila melanogaster, the fast phase of germ band extension (GBE) that drives stretching in the ectoderm happens at the same time as cell division in the neighboring mesoderm. The concurrence of these processes suggests that this synchronization relates to (i) a molecular mechanism that induces division at the same time as GBE happens or, alternatively, (ii) cell division in mesoderm is a response to tension created by the ectoderm. The latter mechanism would ensure coordination between these processes and help release the tension when it reaches a level too high to tolerate. We recently developed a new method, NaNuTrap that utilizes maternally deposited fluorescent proteins (FPs) and zygotically expressed nanobodies to label tissues early in development, which previously was challenging in Drosophila due to its fast development compared to the maturation time of the FPs. We use NaNuTrap to label the mesoderm and separate it from the adjacent ectoderm in order to track cell movement and division in these tissues. In this way, we can investigate whether the more detailed spatial pattern of cell division in the mesoderm also follows the stretching pattern of the adjacent ectoderm tissue in wildtype embryos. We also seek to determine whether cell division in the mesoderm would be affected if tension created by the ectoderm is altered. In summary, we use the NaNuTrap method to investigate if these two processes, stretching of ectoderm and division of mesoderm cells, are coordinated through physical attachment or by synchronized molecular pathways that induce them at the same time.

Using NaNuTrap method to provide insight into synchronized remodeling of adjacent tissues ectoderm and mesoderm at gastrulation