Drosophila Hypoxia Inducible Factor is involved in cell competition

M. KATZ; DEKANTY A; GOMEZ JM; WAPPNER P

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 4th International Meeting of the Latin American Society of Developmental Biology.; 2008

LASDB

An intriguing homeostatic mechanism, called cell competition, that regulates the size and morphology of growing tissues occurs in Drosophila melanogaster. Cell competition is triggered during tissue growth when two cell populations that express different levels of one specific protein interact, resulting in the elimination of one of the two cell populations (the loser). The other clone (the winner) over-proliferates to fill the space left by the loser clone. During cell competition, physical interaction between winner and loser clones is necessary to induce the non-autonomous apoptotic elimination of the loser clone. The Drosophila orthologue of the Hypoxia Inducible Factor-a (HIF-a) is a bHLH-PAS protein called Sima. Sima function in the hypoxic response has been extensively studied in our laboratory, although little is know about its role in development. Since it is known that mammalian HIF-α regulates metabolic activity, we sought to determine whether HIF-α/Sima is involved in cell competition.