The fusion of epithelial sheets - which is vital in development and wound healing - is commonly studied during dorsal closure (DC), when two epithelial sheets sweep over the fly embryo's surface and fuse at the dorsal midline. During DC, each cell must identify and fuse with its matching cell in the opposing sheet to maintain early AP embryonic patterning. On p. 621, Millard and Martin investigate this process by fluorescently labelling in Drosophila embryos two epithelial populations: P compartment cells with RFP-Moesin and A compartment cells with GFP-Moesin, expressed under the engrailed (en) promoter and a patched(ptc) upstream sequence, respectively. The striped expression patterns of RFP- and GFP-Moesin, the authors report, are maintained throughout DC, leading to perfectly matched red and green stripes, with interactions occurring only between colour-matched filopodia. During both DC and wound repair, filopodia enable cells to find their match and to pull misaligned sheets into alignment. Thus, matching is not limited to leading edge cells,but is likely to involve the adhesion molecules that underpin compartment integrity.
Dorsal closure in the red
Dorsal closure in the red. Development 15 February 2008; 135 (4): e401. doi:
Download citation file:
Advertisement
Cited by
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.