A noveladiposeloss-of-function mutant inDrosophila

Abstract

ABSTRACTTo identify genes required for brain growth, we took an RNAi knockdown reverse genetic approach in Drosophila. One potential candidate isolated from this effort is the anti-lipogenic geneadipose(adp).Adphas an established role in the negative regulation of lipogenesis in the fat body of the fly and adipose tissue in mammals. While fat is key to proper development in general,adphas not been investigated during brain development. Here we found that RNAi knockdown ofadpin neuronal stem cells and neurons results in reduced brain lobe volume and sought to replicate this with a mutant fly. We generated a noveladpmutant that acts as a loss-of-function mutant based on buoyancy assay results. We found that despite a change in fat content in the body overall and an increase in the number of larger (>5μm) brain lipid droplets, there was no change in the brain lobe volume of mutant larvae. Overall, our work describes a noveladpmutant that can functionally replace the long-standingadp60mutant and shows that theadpgene has no obvious involvement in brain growth.