Using tiny flows of warm or cool water, researchers have induced one end of a
fruit fly embryo to develop faster than the other.
The researchers used this live - imaging technique to
study fly embryos at a key stage in their development, approximately two hours after the onset of embryonic life where the genes undergo fast and furious transcription for about one hour.
Small flies: For this Kandinsky - like image, researchers stained cross sections of 20 fruit
fly embryos with antibodies to reveal three distinct tissue types: muscle, nerve and skin.
A team at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, watched zebra fish and fruit
fly embryos develop under the scope for as long as 58 hours, charting the location of every cell as it danced around the embryo.
He
thinks fly embryos might sequester mitochondria to keep them from entering cells, since most plants and animals get their mitochondria only from the mother.
The researchers analyzed videos of
Drosophila fly embryos undergoing DNA transcription, the first step in the activation of genes to make proteins.
Panin said the research team found that
fly embryos use special muscle contractions to move inside the egg, which is thought to help their muscles and neurons develop and establish normal communication.
The circles are cross-sections of
fruit fly embryos, stained with antibodies that distinguish between the molecules of three tissue types: muscle, nervous system and skin.
A few tricks that aid the process have been uncovered by University of Tokyo neuroscientist Akinao Nose, who has
studied fly embryos.
This is digital fruit
fly embryo, reconstructed from live imaging data recorded with a SiMView light - sheet microscope (top: dorsal view, bottom: ventral view).
The researchers exposed the microarray to genetic material belonging to fruit
fly embryos, larvae of different stages, and adults.
Tuschl had identified 14 microRNAs from fruit
fly embryos and 19 from a line of human cancer cells.
An approach described in PLoS Pathogens in July allowed British researchers to peer inside fruit
fly embryos to track fluorescent versions of the bacterium Photorhabdus asymbiotica.
In both mouse and fruit
fly embryos, Detlev Arendt, an evolutionary biologist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, has found that cells involved in forming the brain and nerve cord divide into three columns of cells.
Many biological specimens, like the fruit
fly embryo, are so opaque that they scatter large numbers of photons, filling pictures with static.
In the PNAS paper, the scientists demonstrated their method on two genomics problems, the role of gene enhancers in the fruit
fly embryo and alternative splicing in a human - derived cell line.
Carroll, a University of Wisconsin geneticist, describes this emerging field in a lively work colorfully illustrated with images of
fly embryos and butterfly wings.
(Drosophila, or fruit flies, are a frequently used model for understanding human disease, and oskar is critical for normal development of fruit
fly embryos.)
A regulatory factor called Dorsal controls a network of genes crucial for development of fruit
fly embryos.
The Myd88 protein plays a vital role, helping the cells in
the fly embryo distinguish between the front and back of the developing insect.
The microscope image of the dorsal closure of
a fly embryo shows alter - nating stripes of epithelial cells with aligned microtubule bundles (green) and epithelial cells treated with a microtubule - destroying drug (blue).