Control of mating plug expelling and sperm storage in Drosophila: A gynandromorph- and mutation-based dissection.

Introduction: In this study, we analyzed gynandromorphs with female terminalia, to dissect mating-related female behaviors in Drosophila.

Materials And Methods: We used gynandromorphs, experimentally modified wild-type (Oregon-R) females, and mutant females that lacked different components of the female reproductive apparatus.

Results: Many of the gynandromorphs mated but did not expel the mating plug (MP).

Towards long term cultivation of Drosophila wing imaginal discs in vitro.

The wing imaginal disc of Drosophila melanogaster is a prominent experimental system for research on control of cell growth, proliferation and death, as well as on pattern formation and morphogenesis during organogenesis. The precise genetic methodology applicable in this system has facilitated conceptual advances of fundamental importance for developmental biology. Experimental accessibility and versatility would gain further if long term development of wing imaginal discs could be studied also in vitro.

Assaying benzene, a parquet varnish, and a synthetic thinner with respect to induction of in vivo chromosome loss in wing primordial cells of Drosophila.

An assay detecting the in vivo loss of mwh(+)Y, a genetically engineered Y chromosome, in cells of the Drosophila wing primordia was published recently. Loss of the mwh(+)Y chromosome in any of the wing-disk cells - in a multiple wing hairs homozygous background - leads to the formation of an mwh mosaic spot (clone) in the emerging wing. The frequency and the size of the mwh clones allow detection and quantitative evaluation of environmental and/or genetic agents inducing chromosome loss.

Viability, longevity, and egg production of Drosophila melanogaster are regulated by the miR-282 microRNA.

The first microRNAs were discovered some 20 years ago, but only a small fraction of the microRNA-encoding genes have been described in detail yet. Here we report the molecular analysis of a computationally predicted Drosophila melanogaster microRNA gene, mir-282. We show that the mir-282 gene is the source of a 4.