Fruit Fly Wing Research Reshapes Understanding of How Organs Form

This image shows a developing Drosophila fruit fly wing. The colors are marked clones of cells and the shapes of the clones show how growth is organized during development.

Irvine Lab study published in Current Biology changes the scientific understanding of how organs form.

Even when scientists manipulate cells to change how they divide, the shape of a fruit fly’s wing remains the same. Graduate student Zhenru Zhou is lead author. Herve Alégot, a former post-doctoral associate who is now at Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille in France, also contributed to the study.

“We believe that understanding how wing shape is controlled can also help us understand how the normal shape of many human organs is controlled,” said senior author and principal investigator Kenneth D. Irvine. Dr. Irvine is also a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences.

The next step is to pinpoint mechanisms that control organ shape. The Rutgers scientists are focusing on a set of genes that are required for normal organ shape in fruit flies and people, but they don’t yet understand how the genes control shape, Irvine said.