Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 440, Issue 2, 15 August 2018, Pages 88-98
Developmental Biology

Size matters! Aurora A controls Drosophila larval development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2018.05.005Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • AurA indirectly controls Drosophila larval development coordination.

  • Loss of aurA decreases larval tissue development speed.

  • Loss of aurA affects ring gland development speed, which in turns decreases ecdysteroids production.

  • Enlarged central brain in aurA mutants results from both pupariation delay and over-proliferation of pseudo-neuroblasts.

Abstract

In metazoans, organisms arising from a fertilized egg, the embryo will develop through multiple series of cell divisions, both symmetric and asymmetric, leading to differentiation. Aurora A is a serine threonine kinase highly involved in such divisions. While intensively studied at the cell biology level, its function in the development of a whole organism has been neglected. Here we investigated the pleiotropic effect of Aurora A loss-of-function in Drosophila larval early development. We report that Aurora A is required for proper larval development timing control through direct and indirect means. In larval tissues, Aurora A is required for proper symmetric division rate and eventually development speed as we observed in central brain, wing disc and ring gland. Moreover, Aurora A inactivation induces a reduction of ecdysteroids levels and a pupariation delay as an indirect consequence of ring gland development deceleration. Finally, although central brain development is initially restricted, we confirmed that brain lobe size eventually increases due to additive phenotypes: delayed pupariation and over-proliferation of cells with an intermediate cell-identity between neuroblast and ganglion mother cell resulting from defective asymmetric neuroblast cell division.

Keywords

Drosophila
Aurora A kinase
Larval development coordination

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