A Genetic Screen for Genes Involved in Tissue Remodeling
Date
2016-06-20
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Abstract
Tissue remodeling is vital to the health of any multicellular organism. Drosophila melanogaster, which undergoes tissue remodeling during metamorphosis, provides an excellent model to study this process due to highly conserved signaling pathways. During the period of metamorphosis, the larval fat body is remodeled from tightly connected sheets of polygonal cells into individual, free-floating spherical cells. Pupal lethal mutants were screened for abnormalities in the fat body as a way to identify genes involved in directing fat body remodeling. Fat-body morphology was characterized into specific categories: fat body with normal appearance, partially remodeled fat body, fat body that has not remodeled, fat body with abnormal cell appearance, and uncategorized. Four mutant lines with abnormal fat body morphology were identified are currently being characterizing with complementation tests and dissections at multiple developmental time points.
Description
Undergraduate honors thesis - Mount Holyoke College, 2016. Program in Biochemistry.
Keywords
Drosophila, Drosophila melanogaster, Third Chromosome, Fat Body, Genetics, Tissue Remodeling