Mentors: Melissa Sican, B.S. and Janice Crawford, Ph.D
Dorsal closure plays a salient role in morphogenesis in Drosophila species, and it is characterized by the elongation and movement of epidermal cell sheets to close a dorsal hole. Closure happens during embryogenesis and is reliant on cell sheets closing the dorsal hole that is filled with amnioserosa cells. As the epidermal cells- cells on the surface of the embryo- begin to move closer to each other, the aminoserosa cells apoptose allowing for the cell sheets to enter a continuous epithelium. The study of dorsal closures may appear to be obscure, but the process of dorsal closure has mechanics similar to muscle contraction, where myosin and actin are present in both processes allowing for neural tube closures, heart formation, and palate closures to be studied through the embryogenesis of the model species. After a failed complementation of a mutation to an already identified deficiency, Df(2R)ES1, using established mutant lines in observed heavy chain genes, the Kiehart lab went on to further identify mutations that may cause said failure with one of the mutations being the zipper (zip) allele. So, this project focuses on imaging Drosophila embryogenesis of homozygous zip embryos to see the effect of zipper alleles on dorsal closure.
