PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Nora G. Peterson
AU  - Benjamin M. Stormo
AU  - Kevin P. Schoenfelder
AU  - Juliet S. King
AU  - Rayson R. S. Lee
AU  - Donald T. Fox
TI  - Cytoplasmic sharing through apical membrane remodeling
AID  - 10.1101/2020.02.22.960187
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.02.22.960187
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/22/2020.02.22.960187.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/02/22/2020.02.22.960187.full
AB  - Multiple nuclei sharing a common cytoplasm are found in diverse tissues, organisms, and diseases. Yet, multinucleation remains a poorly understood biological property. Cytoplasm sharing invariably involves plasma membrane breaches. In contrast, we discovered cytoplasm sharing without membrane breaching in highly resorptive Drosophila rectal papillae. During a six-hour developmental window, 100 individual papillar cells assemble a multinucleate cytoplasm, allowing passage of proteins of at least 27kDa throughout papillar tissue. Papillar cytoplasm sharing does not employ canonical mechanisms such as failed cytokinesis or muscle fusion pore regulators. Instead, sharing requires gap junction proteins (normally associated with transport of molecules <1kDa), which are positioned by membrane remodeling GTPases. Our work reveals a new role for apical membrane remodeling in converting a multicellular epithelium into a giant multinucleate cytoplasm.ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY Apical membrane remodeling in a resorptive Drosophila epithelium generates a shared multinuclear cytoplasm.