Cell replacement in the Drosophila abdomen

During Drosophila development, larval epithelial cells are replaced by adult histoblasts at the dorsal midline of the pupal abdomen. A new paper in Development by Marcus Michel, Christian Dahmann of the Technische Universität Dresden shows that cell extrusion, the process by which old, apoptotic cells are removed from an epithelium, occurs by a novel mechanism that involves pulsatile contractions of a medial actomyosin network. Their research relied heavily on live imaging of the process of cell replacement in various experimental conditions - a collection of which you can see here. Read the full paper 'Tissue mechanical properties modulate cell extrusion in the Drosophila abdominal epidermis' here: https://dev.biologists.org/content/147/5/dev179606

Category