Regional differences in timing of apical cell area change associated with sex comb rotation during development
Authors: nicolas Malagon; Anari-Mai Byfield; Eleanor Reimer; Stephen Ingram; David Nelson
Affiliation: Canadian Mennonite University
Keywords: s. cell competition; h. other (changes in cell size dynamics)
A sex comb is a row of bristles present on the first leg of Drosophila melanogaster males. During development, these bristles rotate from a perpendicular to a parallel position on the long axis of the leg. In previous work, we quantified the changes in apical cell area in 4 regions using 5-cell clusters surrounding the sex comb and found those 4 regions display irregular oscillations in size, increase and decreasing in apical cell area. To understand the cell dynamics underlying these observations we studied the entire region located above the comb (30 cells) during the period between 23 and 36 hours after pupation (AP). Using timelapse videos of confocal micrographs of the development of the forelegs of ubiDE-Cadherin::GFP flies, we visually determined the apical area by tracing the cells in ImageJ. We observed a reduction in variation in apical cell area associated with comb rotation. However, this uniformity in size is achieved following highly variable local dynamics in apical cell size. This work suggest that irregular oscillations of apical size may be due to local mechanical conditions which underly how overall change in tissue size can occur in a gradual manner.