Cuticle sclerotization in pharate adults and imagoes of Drosophila melanogaster, Ceratitis capitata and Haematobia irritans

PéREZ, M..; RABOSSI,A; SCHACHTER, J., PUJOL-LEREIS,L.; FILIBERTI,A., ARGARAñA, C. AND QUESADA-ALLUé, L.A.

DROSOPHILA INFORMATION SERVICE

University of Oklahoma-USA

Lugar: Norman,OK, USA, 2006; Año: 2006 vol. 89

0070-7333

It is quite difficult to compare with precision the time of development in different insects. For that reason we focused our analysis of  N-â-alanyldopamine synthase in three dipterans in which developmental time can be assessed with some accuracy i.e. Drosophila melanogaster, the Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) Ceratitis capitata and Haematobia irritans (the horn fly). N-â-alanyldopamine synthase is the enzyme conjugating dopamine with  â-alanine to generate N-â-alanyldopamine (NBAD), in the integument of insects NBAD is the main cross-linking precursor of the brown insect cuticles. It is assumed that the enzyme expression is induced by 20-OH-ecdysone, the molt hormone. On the other hand, we recently demonstrated that the enzyme is expressed in neural system in a constitutive way. We have seen that the apparent expression (and probably regulation) of NBAD synthase activity seems very similar in the three flies, thus allowing us to switch certain experiments from small size, short life-cycle Drosophila to much bigger size, longer life-cycle flies. It seems appropriate to assume that robust biochemical data obtained in such way might be very helpful when planning the study of ebony expression in Drosophila, since little is known on gene regulation in Ceratitis and even much less in Haematobia.