Drosophila Mef2 Is Essential for Normal Mushroom Body and Wing Development
bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/311845; this version posted April 30, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Drosophila mef2 is essential for normal mushroom body and wing development Jill R. Crittenden1, Efthimios M. C. Skoulakis2, Elliott. S. Goldstein3, and Ronald L. Davis4 1McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA 2Division of Neuroscience, Biomedical Sciences Research Centre "Alexander Fleming", Vari, 16672, Greece 3 School of Life Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA 4Department of Neuroscience, The Scripps Research Institute Florida, Jupiter, FL 33458, USA Key words: MEF2, mushroom bodies, brain, muscle, wing, vein, Drosophila 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/311845; this version posted April 30, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. ABSTRACT MEF2 (myocyte enhancer factor 2) transcription factors are found in the brain and muscle of insects and vertebrates and are essential for the differentiation of multiple cell types. We show that in the fruitfly Drosophila, MEF2 is essential for normal development of wing veins, and for mushroom body formation in the brain. In embryos mutant for D-mef2, there was a striking reduction in the number of mushroom body neurons and their axon bundles were not detectable.
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