13 - Drosophila Female Germline Stem Cells

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the latest progress on Drosophila ovarian germline stem cell research and evaluates its general significance to stem cell biology. Drosophila ovary provides an excellent opportunity to study the defining mechanisms of stem cells. Recent studies have highlighted the essential role of intercellular mechanisms in particular, which constitutes a microenvironment, the stem cell niche, in regulating the self-renewing division of female germline stem cells. Germline stem cell, somatic stem cell, and terminal filament cell are expressed in all somatic and germline cells, with a high level of protein accumulation at the cap cell–stem cell interface. In the stem cell niche, cap cells seem to have a crucial function in regulating the self-renewing ability of germline stem cells. For asymmetrically dividing stem cells, such as female germline stem cells in Drosophila, it is also important to have an intracellular asymmetry-generating mechanism that gives rise to the divergent fates of the two daughter cells. Recent works in germline stem cells in Drosophila have clearly defined the microenvironment, or the stem cell niche. Elucidation of the mechanisms that underlie the self-renewing division of germline stem cells in Drosophila is occurring at an exciting rate.