Abstract
AbstractAnimals develop in unpredictable, variable environments. In response to environmental change some aspects of development adjust to generate plastic phenotypes. Other aspects of development, however, are buffered against environmental change to produce robust phenotypes. How organ development is coordinated to accommodate both plastic and robust developmental responses is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that the steroid hormone ecdysone coordinates both plasticity of organ size and robustness of organ pattern in the developing wings of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Using fed and starved larvae that lack a prothoracic glands, which synthesise ecdysone, we show that nutrition regulates growth both via ecdysone and an ecdysone-independent mechanism, while nutrition regulates patterning only via ecdysone. We then demonstrate that growth shows a linear response to ecdysone concentration, while patterning shows a threshold response. Collectively, these data support a model where nutritionally-regulated ecdysone fluctuations confer plasticity by regulating disc growth as a graded response to basal ecdysone levels, and confers robustness by initiating patterning only once ecdysone peaks exceeds a threshold concentration. This could represent a generalizable mechanism through which hormones coordinate plastic growth with robust patterning in the face of environmental change.
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Cited by
2 articles.
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