TY  - GEN
T1  - Ovarian somatic Piwi regulates nurse cell proliferation and oocyte specification in Drosophila
AU  - Gonzalez, Lauren E
AU  - Zhu, Gina
AU  - Lin, Haifan
DO  - 10.17912/micropub.biology.000324
UR  - http://beta.micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-000324/
AB  - The development of germ cells requires communication between the germline and the soma, a process that has been extensively characterized within the Drosophila ovary. Throughout the lifetime of the female fly, germline stem cells (GSCs) continually self-renew and produce differentiating daughter cells (cystoblasts), and this process relies on communication with the ovarian somatic cells (OSCs) within the stem cell niche: terminal filament cells, cap cells, and escort cells (Lin and Spradling 1993, Xie and Spradling 2000). Cystoblasts then go through four rounds of cell division with incomplete cytokinesis to produce a germline cyst of precisely 16 sister cells (cystocytes) with their cytoplasm connected by intercellular cytoplasmic bridges called ring canals. One of the 16 cystocytes subsequently becomes the oocyte, while the other 15 become nurse cells. Nurse cells endoreplicate to become extremely polyploid, and produce and transport mRNAs and proteins into the oocyte via ring canals to promote its maturation. Due to this unidirectional flow, the oocyte can be easily identified even within the earliest stage egg chambers by the localization of proteins such as Orb (Christerson and McKearin 1994, Lantz et al. 1994), and at later stages it is easily recognizable from its very small nucleus-to-cytoplasm ratio. This 16-cell germline cyst is encapsulated by a monolayer of somatic follicle cells, which support oocyte development throughout the remainder of oogenesis.
PY  - 2020
JO  - microPublication Biology
ER  -