Identifying Genes Involved in Larval Fat Body Remodeling in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Tissue remodeling is an essential process that occurs in multicellular organisms and is essential for the growth, development, and health of any organism. Drosophila melanogaster is an important organism for the study of this process as tissue remodeling is crucial for proper metamorphosis, during which the larval fat body remodels from a sheet of connected, polygonal cells into single, spherical cells which can then move throughout the body and head cavity of the fly. In this study, complementation tests were performed on lines of flies that each had a single mutation on the third chromosome that resulted in both abnormal fat body morphology and pharate adult lethality. The F1 progeny were scored for fat body morphology and adult lifespan post-eclosion in order to elucidate the relationship between the two phenotypes and better understand the role of potential novel genes. Abnormal fat body morphology was found to result in a reduced lifespan post-eclosion, where the degree of remodeling shows a slightly positive correlation with lifespan. In addition, I have begun to linkage map some of the mutations using pairs of dominant markers to identify the region of the third chromosome where each mutation is present.