RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Drosophila embryos spatially sort their nutrient stores to facilitate their utilization
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.05.20.492771
DO 10.1101/2022.05.20.492771
A1 Marcus D. Kilwein
A1 Matthew R. Johnson
A1 Jonathon M. Thomalla
A1 Anthony Mahowald
A1 Michael A. Welte
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/20/2022.05.20.492771.1.abstract
AB Animal embryos are provisioned by their mothers with a diverse nutrient supply critical for development. In Drosophila, the three most abundant nutrients (triglycerides, proteins, and glycogen) are sequestered in distinct storage structures, lipid droplets (LDs), yolk vesicles (YVs) and glycogen granules (GGs). Using transmission electron microscopy as well as live and fixed-sample fluorescence imaging, we find that all three storage structures are dispersed throughout the egg but are then spatially allocated to distinct tissues by gastrulation: LDs largely to the peripheral epithelium, YVs and GGs to the central yolk cell. To confound the embryo’s ability to sort its nutrients, we employ mutants in Jabba and Mauve to generate LD:GG or LD:YV compound structures. In these mutants, LDs are missorted to the yolk cell and their turnover is delayed. Our observations demonstrate dramatic spatial nutrient sorting in early embryos and provide the first evidence for its functional importance.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.