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Published October 9, 1987 | public
Journal Article

The sevenless^+ protein is expressed apically in cell membranes of developing Drosophila retina; it is not restricted to cell R7

Abstract

In the sevenless (sev) mutants of Drosophila, a single cell type, photoreceptor R7, does not develop. We made monoclonal antibody against a sev^+-β-galactosidase fusion protein, and used it to determine the ultrastructural localization of the sev^+ protein in the larval eye disc. The protein is expressed on the apical surface of the developing retina. It is not restricted to cell R7; it is expressed in all the presumptive photoreceptor cells, cone cells, and possibly others. The protein localizes to the cell membranes of the apical tips and their microvilli, away from the bulk of the cell-cell contacts. Possible mechanisms for generating the specificity of the sev phenotype are discussed in light of these results.

Additional Information

© 1987 Cell Press. Received 27 July 1987, Revised 11 August 1987. We are grateful to R. Young, J. Mao, M. Anderson, and E. Eichenberger for excellent technical assistance. We thank J. Blanks and M. Pickford for their technical advice and use of their EM facililies (funded by NIH ET03040-08), D. Ballinger and R. Hackett for many helpful suggestions and advice, and members of the Benzer lab for their review of the manuscript. This work was supported by a grant to S. B. (DCB-8409366) from the National Science Foundation and the Markey Developmental Biology Program. U. B. is a Burroughs Welllcome Fund Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. R J. R. was supported in part by a National Research Service Award (1 T32GM07616) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. D. R. H. was supported by the Medical Research Council of Canada and the Gordon Ross Foundation. B. A. R. was supported by a Weizmann Fellowship. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023