QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s):
Home     Help     Feedback     Subscriptions     Archive     Search     Table of Contents

First published online December 8, 2004

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in Development Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Same legs, different developmental regulation

Insect legs all look pretty similar, consisting of proximal, medial and distal regions. Nevertheless, report Herke and co-workers, the regulatory mechanisms that govern leg specification and segmentation in the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus are more different from those acting in Drosophila melanogaster than expected from simple morphological and molecular comparisons (see p. 27). The researchers use RNAi to show that in O. fasciatus, tiptop is required for the segmentation of the distal leg and to switch appendage identity from antenna to leg. In contrast to D. melanogaster leg specification, Antennapedia (Antp) is not required to specify leg identity in O. fasciatus. However, in both insects Antp controls medial leg segmentation. Based on their results, Herke et al. propose that a tiptop-like activity is a likely component of an ancestral leg specification mechanism and speculate about how insect legs may have evolved from a ground-state appendage.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

Related articles in Development:

Functional analyses of tiptop and Antennapedia in the embryonic development of Oncopeltus fasciatus suggests an evolutionary pathway from ground state to insect legs

Scott W. Herke, Nahum V. Serio, and Bryan T. Rogers
Development 2005 132: 27-34. [Abstract] [Full Text]  

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in Development Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?