Post-eclosion growth in the Drosophila ejaculatory duct is driven by Juvenile hormone signaling and is essential for male fertility.

The Drosophila Ejaculatory duct (ED) is a secretory tissue of the somatic male reproductive system. The ED is involved in the secretion of seminal fluid components and ED-specific antimicrobial peptides that aid in fertility and the female post-mating response. The ED is composed of secretory epithelial cells surrounded by a layer of innervated contractile muscle.

Cell cycle re-entry in the aging brain.

The brain is an organ comprised mostly of long-lived, quiescent cells that perform vital functions throughout an animal's life. Due to the brain's limited regenerative ability, these long-lived cells must engage unique mechanisms to cope with accumulated damage over time. We have shown that a subset of differentiated neuronal and glial cells in the fruit fly brain become polyploid during adulthood.

Post-eclosion growth in the Ejaculatory Duct is driven by Juvenile Hormone signaling and is essential for male fertility.

The Ejaculatory duct (ED) is a secretory tissue of the somatic male reproductive system. The ED is involved in the secretion of seminal fluid components and ED-specific antimicrobial peptides that aid in fertility and the female post-mating response. The ED is composed of secretory epithelial cells surrounded by a layer of innervated contractile muscle.

Transcriptional repression and enhancer decommissioning silence cell cycle genes in postmitotic tissues.

The mechanisms that maintain a non-cycling status in postmitotic tissues are not well understood. Many cell cycle genes have promoters and enhancers that remain accessible even when cells are terminally differentiated and in a non-cycling state, suggesting their repression must be maintained long term. In contrast, enhancer decommissioning has been observed for rate-limiting cell cycle genes in the Drosophila wing, a tissue where the cells die soon after eclosion, but it has been unclear if this also occurs in other contexts of terminal differentiation.

Oncogenic signaling in the adult prostate-like accessory gland leads to activation of a conserved pro-tumorigenic program, in the absence of proliferation.

models for tumorigenesis and metastasis have revealed conserved mechanisms of signaling that are also involved in mammalian cancer. Many of these models use the proliferating tissues of the larval stages of development, when tissues are highly mitotically active, or stem cells are abundant. Fewer tumorigenesis models use adult animals to initiate tumor formation when many tissues are largely terminally differentiated and postmitotic.