For more reliable comparisons of gene expression patterns, wild-type and mutant tissues were processed on the same slides.
We thereby found that the increased proportion of erythroblasts in mutant tissues was due to a 3-fold increase in the ratio of uncondensed (FSChigh/TOhigh) versus condensed erythroblasts (FSClow/TOmed), i.e., early versus late erythroblasts (Fig. 1G).
However, Cys level in mutant tissues was marginally higher than the MC level (Table 2).
Outgrowths from both WT and mutant tissues were indistinguishable, and both responded to the hormone treatment as shown by alveolar budding along the ducts.
For semi-quantitative imaging, control and mutant tissues were processed for immunofluorescence in parallel and images were acquired by confocal microscopy with the equivalent settings (laser power, gain, magnification and thickness of the stacks).
However, when the mutant tissues were tested in a cyclic strain experiment, they became more lax with an increasing number of cycles, which is analogous to the progressive joint laxity observed in PSACH-MED patients (2).
Growth properties of PTEN mutant tissue are influenced by the neighboring tissue.
Furthermore, cells neighboring with PTEN mutant tissue are smaller than those in the discs containing control clones.
Clones of mutant tissue are induced in the 1st instar stage of larval development (day 1-2), and by the 3rd instar stage (day 5) these have formed large GFP-positive tumours.
