The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., announced that it had chosen the Ennead Architects firm to design the museum's $200 million expansion wing, which is scheduled for completion in 2019.
GMR>ERK D334N had a rough eye phenotype consistent with the initially characterized fly mutant and dpp>ERK D334N had additional veins and clonal expansion of wing epithelium, indicating that the ERK D334N transgenes encoded functionally active ERK (Fig. 6E,F).
While apoptosis was efficiently prevented, wing expansion was normal in these wings (Fig. 5K).
Wing expansion defects were scored as unexpanded wings (UEW), partially expanded wings (PEW), and expanded wings as described (Luan et al., 2006b).
We find that the whole-wing down-regulation of Gαs results in the failure of wing expansion, demonstrating that this change in the shape of the wing is the major morphological outcome of the bursicon-rickets-Gs signaling.
Bursicon, another αβ heterodimer member of this cysteine knot family of neurohormones, was characterized in insects for its role in triggering the sclerotization of the cuticle and expansion of the wings during the final phase of metamorphosis [ 58].
These results suggest that the Gβγ heterodimer might take a role in the transduction cascade, as shown for other systems: Gαs mediates the expansion of Drosophila wings after hatching, and when Gαo is over-expressed, Gαo antagonizes the effect of Gαs by competing with the Gβγ heterodimer, thus reducing Gβγ effective concentration (Katanayeva et al., 2010).
Interestingly, they discovered that a point is reached where further expansion of the wings causes more harm to instrument fixation as the additional distance achieved by the stainless steel anchor actually placed more stress on the surrounding bone, thereby increasing the risk of fracture.
Indeed, we found an overwhelming rescue of the wing expansion defect if Gβ13F/Gγ1 were co-overexpressed: only 3% of aged female wings and 32% of the male wings now remained folded, as compared to 79% and 93% of female and male flies, respectively, overexpressing Gαo alone (Table 2).
Cumulatively, our data suggest that apoptosis, being an important process during post-eclosion wing maturation, is unlikely to be the sole driving force behind wing expansion.
Gαo can be specifically uncoupled from GPCRs using the expression of pertussis toxin [29]; such whole wing expression of pertussis toxin does not result in any visible defects in wing expansion [16].
