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Butterfly eyespot color pattern formation requires physical contact of the pupal wing epithelium with extracellular materials for morphogenic signal propagation.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Eyespot color pattern formation on butterfly wings is sensitive to physical damage and physical distortion as well as physical contact with materials on the surface of wing epithelial tissue at the pupal stage. Contact-mediated eyespot color pattern changes may imply a developmental role of the extracellular matrix in morphogenic signal propagation. Here, we examined eyespot responses to various contact materials, focusing on the hindwing posterior eyespots of the blue pansy butterfly, Junonia orithya. RESULTS:Contact with various materials, including both nonbiological and biological materials, induced eyespot enlargement, reduction, or no change in eyespot size, and each material was characterized by a unique response profile. For example, silicone glassine paper almost always induced a considerable reduction, while glass plates most frequently induced enlargement, and plastic plates generally produced no change. The biological materials tested here (fibronectin, polylysine, collagen type I, and gelatin) resulted in various responses, but polylysine induced more cases of enlargement, similar to glass plates. The response profile of the materials was not readily predictable from the chemical composition of the materials but was significantly correlated with the water contact angle (water repellency) of the material surface, suggesting that the surface physical chemistry of materials is a determinant of eyespot size. When the proximal side of a prospective eyespot was covered with a size-reducing material (silicone glassine paper) and the distal side and the organizer were covered with a material that rarely induced size reduction (plastic film), the proximal side of the eyespot was reduced in size in comparison with the distal side, suggesting that signal propagation but not organizer activity was inhibited by silicone glassine paper. CONCLUSIONS:These results suggest that physical contact with an appropriate hydrophobic surface is required for morphogenic signals from organizers to propagate normally. The binding of the apical surface of the epithelium with an opposing surface may provide mechanical support for signal propagation. In addition to conventional molecular morphogens, there is a possibility that mechanical distortion of the epithelium that is propagated mechanically serves as a nonmolecular morphogen to induce subsequent molecular changes, in accordance with the distortion hypothesis for butterfly wing color pattern formation.

SUBMITTER: Otaki JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7110832 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Butterfly eyespot color pattern formation requires physical contact of the pupal wing epithelium with extracellular materials for morphogenic signal propagation.

Otaki Joji M JM

BMC developmental biology 20200331 1

<h4>Background</h4>Eyespot color pattern formation on butterfly wings is sensitive to physical damage and physical distortion as well as physical contact with materials on the surface of wing epithelial tissue at the pupal stage. Contact-mediated eyespot color pattern changes may imply a developmental role of the extracellular matrix in morphogenic signal propagation. Here, we examined eyespot responses to various contact materials, focusing on the hindwing posterior eyespots of the blue pansy b ...[more]

PMID: 32234033

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Project description:We investigated gene expression levels in Heliconius erato butterflies with divergent wing patterns across a 656KB genomic interval linked to the red color pattern wing polymorphism. This included comparison of expression between two H. erato color pattern populations (H. e. petiverana and a H.e. etylus x H. himera hybrid) across three sections of the forewing that differed in pigmentation (the basal, mid, and distal wing sections) and five different stages of pupal development (Day 1, 3, 5 pupae and ommochrome and melanin pigmentation stages). These results allowed us to determine whether certain genes in this interval were differentially expressed between the wing pattern elements, and, therefore, potentially responsible for adaptive color pattern variation in these butterflies. Forewings from a total of 29 individuals, covering three biological replicates of five developmental time points for each of the two H. erato distinct phenotypes were dissected, with the only exception being that there were only two replicates of the day 1 hybrid phenotype. Individuals were reared at 25˚C and dissected at the following stages: a) day 1 = 12 hr after pupation; b) day 3 = 60 hr after pupation; c) day 5 = 108 hr after pupation; d) early ommochrome = ~ 156 hr after pupation when red scales in forewing partially mature, showing a pale orange color; and e) early melanin = ~ 180 hr after pupation melanic scales begin to turn black and are present primarily at the center of the wing. Using wing veins as landmarks, each forewing was cut into three sections corresponding to the color pattern boundaries: basal (F1), middle (F2), and apical (F3). A eight custom-designed Roche NimbleGen 12x135K format microarrays with probes spanning a 656,307bp genomic region (Roche NimbleGen Inc., Madison, Wisconsin, United States) were used to hybridize double stranded cDNA from 87 tissue samples. Repetitive sequence elements found more than five times across all currently available H. erato genomic sequences, including the probed region as well as additional genomic BAC sequences, were masked from the tiling region. The remaining unmasked non-repetitive genomic sequences were tiled using 60 bp probes staggered every 13 bp on average, with slight modifications to ensure probe quality, for a total of 48,547 probes. Microarry design and printing was performed by Roche NimbleGen. cDNA labeling, hybridization, and array scanning was performed by the City of Hope Microarray Facility (Duarte, California, United States). In addition to the probes from the red color pattern intervals, the arrays also include 40,763 probes across two other genomic intervals not addressed in this study, 45,046 probes representing 12450 transcripts from a recent transcriptome assembly at 1-6X coverage, and 3248 random probes. Results from the transcriptome and other color pattern intervals will be published separately, however, we analyzed all probes together for array normalization and quality control.

Dataset Information

Butterfly eyespot color pattern formation requires physical contact of the pupal wing epithelium with extracellular materials for morphogenic signal propagation.

Publications

Butterfly eyespot color pattern formation requires physical contact of the pupal wing epithelium with extracellular materials for morphogenic signal propagation.

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