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Science 24 August 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5534, pp. 1477 - 1480
DOI: 10.1126/science.1062542
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Reports

The Ground State of the Ventral Appendage in Drosophila

Fernando Casares,* Richard S. Manndagger

In Drosophila melanogaster, the antennae, legs, genitalia, and analia make up a serially homologous set of ventral appendages that depend on different selector genes for their unique identities. The diversity among these structures implies that there is a common ground state that selector genes modify to generate these different appendage morphologies. Here we show that the ventral appendage that forms in the absence of selector gene activity is leglike but consists of only two segments along its proximo-distal axis: a proximal segment and a distal tarsus. These results raise the possibility that, during evolution, leglike appendages could have developed without selector gene activity.

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, 701 West 168 Street, New York, NY 10032, USA.
*   Present address: Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Rua do Campo Alegre 823, Porto-4150, Portugal.

dagger    To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rsm10{at}columbia.edu

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