JUNCTIONAL ARMADILLO (β-CATENIN) MAINTAINS PROPER TISSUE ARCHITECTURE DURINGDROSOPHILAEYE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Formation of thecompoundeye of Drosophilarequires carefully orchestrated developmental events that occur in its progenitor epithelium, the eye imaginal disc.This tissue is composed of two continuous, apposed epithelia: the disc proper epithelium (DpE), which forms the retina, and the peripodial epithelium (PE), which ultimately forms head cuticle. In this work, I describe an armadillo (b-catenin)loss-of-function condition in which the developing DpEis disrupted and displays a phenotype that I call“retinalshift”. This developmental phenotype ultimately results in abnormal fly eye morphology that is incompatible with compound eye vision.I uncover a role for the PE in maintaining proper retinal epithelium morphology during eye formation and trace the molecular mechanism to the regulation of Hippo-Yki pathway in PE cells by the function of Armadillo at the adherens junctions.