Exon-dependent function and expression of empty spiracles in Rhodnius prolixus

ADA PAULA NAZAR; ANDRÉS ESTEBAN LAVORE

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Xth Meeting of the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology; 2019

Latin American Society for Developmental Biology

Since empty spiracles (ems) was identified and characterized in Drosophila melanogaster as gap gene, severals studies were carried out in others order of insects to corroborate its homology function. In our study model, the blood sucking bug Rhodnius prolixus, ems is composed of three coding regions that correspond with N-, C- and homeo domains. The aim of this study was to determine the expression and function of the first two of these, called here as Rp-ems1 and Rp-ems2, respectively. In situ hybridization revealed spatial and temporal differences in staining patterns according to the sequence analyzed: while Rp-ems1 is expressed differentially during embryogenesis from blastoderm to pre-nymphal stage, Rp-ems2 is expressed in ovarioles and unfertilized oocytes. Consistently, distinct phenotypes were obtained by parental RNAi. Rp-ems1RNAi showed unviable pre-nymphs with partial hatching and significant reduced heads and while Rp-ems2RNAi showed absence of embryo in the eggs laid by the interfered females. These allow to infer the exon-dependent dual function of Rp-ems, as a result of an alternative splicing event that gives rise to the differential expression of maternal or zygotic transcripts, re-positioning ems in other hierarchical orders of the set of genes that regulate the segmentation of the embryo.