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Research Article
ScienceAsia 31 (2005): 005-011 |doi: 10.2306/scienceasia1513-1874.2005.31.005
Preliminary Studies on the Role of ten-a during CNS
and Eye Development of Drosophila
Lertluk Ngernsiri,a#* Nora Fascetti,b# Wijit Wisoruma and Stefan Baumgartnerb
ABSTRACT: ten-a is one of the two Drosophila genes whose products belong to the Ten M protein family. The
Ten-a protein is a type II transmembrane protein. This protein was found to be mainly expressed in the CNS
of the embryo and in the compound eye of the pupa. No report about the function of ten-a has been
published to date. Here, we showed, in a preliminary report, that ten-a has a function in the development of
the CNS and in the compound eye. To study the function of ten-a during CNS development, doublestranded
RNA interference (dsRNAi) experiments were performed. We found that embryos without ten-a protein have defects in the commissures, suggesting that ten-a is likely to be involved in commissure
formation. Furthermore, to study the function of ten-a in the eye, the Gal4/UAS system was used to
overexpress ten-a at different stages of eye development. We found that extra amounts of ten-a can interfere
with the development of the eye. Flies overexpressing ten-a showed eye defects such as small and rough eyes,
and black ommatidia. The results indicated that ten-a may be a novel gene involved in eye morphogenesis.
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a Department of Genetics, Faculty of Science, Kasetsart University, Bangkok 10900, Thailand.
b Section for Developmental Biology, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Lund University, BMC B13, Lund 22184, Sweden.
# Both authors contributed equally to the work.
* Corresponding author, E-mail: khawlln@yahoo.com
Received 23 Apr 2004,
Accepted 10 Nov 2004
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