Patterning the Drosophila embryo

Patterning the Drosophila embryo

Combinatorial patterning mechanisms in the Drosophila embryo.

The classical concept of the morphogen gradient proposes that small differences in the levels of a signalling molecule or transcription factor are responsible for producing a continuous spectrum of distinctive cellular identities across a naïve field of cells. In this review, we discuss how the Dorsal gradient controls the dorsal-ventral patterning of the early Drosophila embryo. This gradient ...

DmMyD88 controls dorsoventral patterning of the Drosophila embryo.

MyD88 is an adapter protein in the signal transduction pathway mediated by interleukin-1 (IL-1) and Toll-like receptors. A Drosophila homologue of MyD88 (DmMyD88) was recently shown to be required for the Toll-mediated immune response. In Drosophila, the Toll pathway was originally characterized for its role in the dorsoventral patterning of the embryo. We found that, like Toll, DmMyD88 messeng...

MAPK Substrate Competition Integrates Patterning Signals in the Drosophila Embryo

Terminal regions of the Drosophila embryo are patterned by the localized activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. This depends on the MAPK-mediated downregulation of Capicua (Cic), a repressor of the terminal gap genes. We establish that downregulation of Cic is antagonized by the anterior patterning morphogen Bicoid (Bcd). We demonstrate that this effect does not depe...

Robust, Bistable, BMP-Dependent Patterning of the Drosophila Blastoderm Embryo

Supporting online material (SOM) 2 SUMMARY In many developing systems, the developmental fate of a cell is determined by its position in a time-independent spatial distribution of a morphogen. However, during dorsal-ventral patterning in the Drosophila embryo, signaling begins broad and low, and refines to a narrow, high intensity band. This suggests that cells respond to the local transient mo...