ABSTRACT
MEF2 (myocyte enhancer factor 2) transcription factors are found in the brain and muscle of insects and vertebrates and are essential for the differentiation of multiple cell types. We show that in the fruit fly Drosophila, MEF2 is essential for the formation of mushroom bodies in the embryonic brain and for the normal development of wings in the adult. In embryos mutant for mef2, there is a striking reduction in the number of mushroom body neurons and their axon bundles are not detectable. The onset of MEF2 expression in neurons of the mushroom bodies coincides with their formation in the embryo and, in larvae, expression is restricted to post-mitotic neurons. In flies with a mef2 point mutation that disrupts nuclear localization, we find that MEF2 is restricted to a subset of Kenyon cells that project to the α/β, and γ axonal lobes of the mushroom bodies, but not to those forming the α’/β’ lobes.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: J.R.C., R.L.D.; Methodology: J.R.C., E.M.C.S., E.S.G.; Validation: J.R.C., E.M.C.S., E.S.G., R.L.D.; Formal analysis: J.R.C.; Investigation: J.R.C., E.M.C.S.; Resources: E.M.C.S., E.S.G.; Writing - original draft: J.R.C., R.L.D.; Writing - review & editing: J.R.C., E.M.C.S., R.L.D.; Visualization: J.R.C.; Supervision: R.L.D.; Project administration: R.L.D.; Funding acquisition: R.L.D.
Funding
This work was supported by a pre-doctoral National Institute of Mental Health grant to J.R.C. and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grant [1R35NS097224] to R.L.D.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at http://bio.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/bio.035618.supplemental
- Received May 9, 2018.
- Accepted July 31, 2018.
- © 2018. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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