Dataset Information

Understanding in vivo blood cell migration--Drosophila hemocytes lead the way.

ABSTRACT: Drosophila embryonic hemocytes have emerged as a potent system to analyze the roles of key regulators of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons live and in an in vivo context (see Table I and references therein). The relative ease with which live imaging can be used to visualize the invasive migrations of these highly motile macrophages and their responses to wound and chemoattractant signals make them a particularly appropriate and genetically tractable cell type to study in relation to pathological conditions such as cancer metastasis and inflammation. ( 1-3) In order to understand how signaling pathways are integrated for a coordinated response, a question with direct relevance to autoimmune dysfunction, we have sought to more fully characterize the inputs these cells receive in vivo over the course of their developmental dispersal. These studies have recently revealed that hemocyte migration is intimately associated with the development of the ventral nerve cord (VNC), a structure used by hemocytes to disperse over the embryo that itself requires this association for its correct morphogenesis. Crucially the VNC must separate from the epidermis to create a channel for hemocyte migration, revealing how constriction of extracellular space can be used to control cell migration in vivo. ( 4).

SUBMITTER: Evans IR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3127059 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Understanding in vivo blood cell migration--Drosophila hemocytes lead the way.

Evans Iwan Robert IR Wood Will W

Fly 20110401 2

Drosophila embryonic hemocytes have emerged as a potent system to analyze the roles of key regulators of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons live and in an in vivo context (see Table I and references therein). The relative ease with which live imaging can be used to visualize the invasive migrations of these highly motile macrophages and their responses to wound and chemoattractant signals make them a particularly appropriate and genetically tractable cell type to study in relation to pathol ...[more]

PMID: 21150318

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundIn metazoans, the hematopoietic system plays a key role both in normal development and in defense of the organism. In Drosophila, the cellular immune response involves three types of blood cells: plasmatocytes, crystal cells and lamellocytes. This last cell type is barely present in healthy larvae, but its production is strongly induced upon wasp parasitization or in mutant contexts affecting larval blood cell homeostasis. Notably, several zygotic mutations leading to melanotic mass (or "tumor") formation in larvae have been associated to the deregulated differentiation of lamellocytes. To gain further insights into the gene regulatory network and the mechanisms controlling larval blood cell homeostasis, we conducted a tissue-specific loss of function screen using hemocyte-specific Gal4 drivers and UAS-dsRNA transgenic lines.ResultsBy targeting around 10% of the Drosophila genes, this in vivo RNA interference screen allowed us to recover 59 melanotic tumor suppressor genes. In line with previous studies, we show that melanotic tumor formation is associated with the precocious differentiation of stem-cell like blood progenitors in the larval hematopoietic organ (the lymph gland) and the spurious differentiation of lamellocytes. We also find that melanotic tumor formation can be elicited by defects either in the fat body, the embryo-derived hemocytes or the lymph gland. In addition, we provide a definitive confirmation that lymph gland is not the only source of lamellocytes as embryo-derived plasmatocytes can differentiate into lamellocytes either upon wasp infection or upon loss of function of the Friend of GATA cofactor U-shaped.ConclusionsIn this study, we identify 55 genes whose function had not been linked to blood cell development or function before in Drosophila. Moreover our analyses reveal an unanticipated plasticity of embryo-derived plasmatocytes, thereby shedding new light on blood cell lineage relationship, and pinpoint the Friend of GATA transcription cofactor U-shaped as a key regulator of the plasmatocyte to lamellocyte transformation.

Dataset Information

Understanding in vivo blood cell migration--Drosophila hemocytes lead the way.

Publications

Understanding in vivo blood cell migration--Drosophila hemocytes lead the way.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets