Abstract
BackgroundThe Drosophila wing represents a particularly appropriate model to investigate the developmental control of phenotypic variation. Previous studies which aimed to identify candidate genes for wing morphology demonstrated that the genetic basis of wing shape variation in D. melanogaster is composed of numerous genetic factors causing small, additive effects. In this study, we analyzed wing shape in males and females from 191 lines of D. melanogaster, homozygous for a single P-element insertion, using geometric morphometrics techniques. The analysis allowed us to identify known and novel candidate genes that may contribute to the expression of wing shape in each sex separately and to compare them to candidate genes affecting wing size which have been identified previously using the same lines.ResultsOur results indicate that more than 63% of induced mutations affected wing shape in one or both sexes, although only 33% showed significant differences in both males and females. The joint analysis of wing size and shape revealed that only 19% of the P-element insertions caused coincident effects on both components of wing form in one or both sexes. Further morphometrical analyses revealed that the intersection between veins showed the smallest displacements in the proximal region of the wing. Finally, we observed that mutations causing general deformations were more common than expected in both sexes whereas the opposite occurred with those generating local changes. For most of the 94 candidate genes identified, this seems to be the first record relating them with wing shape variation.ConclusionsOur results support the idea that the genetic architecture of wing shape is complex with many different genes contributing to the trait in a sexually dimorphic manner. This polygenic basis, which is relatively independent from that of wing size, is composed of genes generally involved in development and/or metabolic functions, especially related to the regulation of different cellular processes such as motility, adhesion, communication and signal transduction. This study suggests that understanding the genetic basis of wing shape requires merging the regulation of vein patterning by signalling pathways with processes that occur during wing development at the cellular level.
Highlights
The Drosophila wing represents a appropriate model to investigate the developmental control of phenotypic variation
Frequency analyses showed that the number of cases in which Pelement insertions affected only wing size, only wing shape or both traits are within the expected values according to an independent behaviour of those traits in males (c21 = 1.578; p = 0.209) as well as in females (c21 = 0.388; p = 0.533)
The results of the frequency analyses suggest that these traits show an independent behaviour with respect to the genes involved in their expression. These results indicate that the genetic basis of wing shape and wing size are largely independent of each other which is consistent with previous observations [12,22,24,26,27,28,29,30,31,32]
Summary
The Drosophila wing represents a appropriate model to investigate the developmental control of phenotypic variation. The Drosophila wing represents a appropriate model to investigate the developmental specified may be lost later in development due to unsuccessful maintenance and early-appearing ectopic venation may be lost or reduced by subsequent refinement [3]. In this respect, the ancestor of extant Drosophila probably had certain mechanisms that specified additional veins (reviewed in [4]). Components belonging to different signaling pathways seem to interact, forming networks which establish vein and intervein regions [9,10,11]
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