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The Drosophila RNA-binding protein Lark is required for localization of Dmoesin to the oocyte cortex during oogenesis

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Abstract

The RNA-binding protein Lark has an essential maternal role during Drosophila oogenesis. Elimination of maternal expression results in defects in cytoplasmic dumping and actin cytoskeletal organization in nurse cells. The function of this protein is dependent on the activity of one or more N-terminal RNA-binding domains. Here, we report the identification of Dmoesin (Dmoe) as a candidate RNA target of Lark during oogenesis. In addition to actin defects in the nurse cells of lark mutant ovaries, we observed mislocalization of posteriorly localized mRNAs including oskar and germ cell less in the developing oocyte. Anteriorly and dorsally localized mRNAs were not affected. In addition, we observed displacement of the actin cytoskeleton from the oocyte plasma membrane. These phenotypes are reminiscent of mutations in Dmoe and suggested that this RNA maybe a potential target of Lark. We observed a significant decrease in Dmoe protein associated with the membrane of the developing oocyte with no changes in expression or localization within the nurse cells. Evidence for an association between Lark protein and moe RNA during oogenesis comes from results of a microarray-based Ribonomics approach to identify Lark RNA targets. Thus, our results provide evidence that Dmoe RNA is a target of Lark during oogenesis and that it likely regulates either the splicing or translation of this RNA.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to F. Rob Jackson and his lab, especially Mary Roberts, Yanmei Huang, and Ginka Genova for fly stocks, reagents, and unpublished methodologies related to these studies. We thank Dr. Paul MacDonald for providing us with the bcd cDNA clone and Dan Kiehart for the anti-moe antibody. We would also like to thank Wenxiang Zhang and Connie Zhao of The Rockefeller University Genomics Resource Center for microarray analysis and Xuning Wang of the Rockefeller University IT Department for analysis of the microarray data. This work was supported by grants from the NIH and PSC-CUNY to G.P.M.

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  1. Department of Biology, York College, The City University of New York, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica, NY, 11451, USA

    Gerard P. McNeil, Manpreet Kaur, Sheryl Purrier & Ruth Kang

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  1. Gerard P. McNeil
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  2. Manpreet Kaur
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  3. Sheryl Purrier
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Correspondence to Gerard P. McNeil.

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Communicated by C. Desplan

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Supplemental Table 1

The 37 candidate Lark targets that showed a fold enrichment of 1.4 or greater over Total RNA in three independent immunoprecipitation experiments (DOC 72.5 KB)

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McNeil, G.P., Kaur, M., Purrier, S. et al. The Drosophila RNA-binding protein Lark is required for localization of Dmoesin to the oocyte cortex during oogenesis. Dev Genes Evol 219, 11–19 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-008-0260-x

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