Abstract
Stem cell pools are dynamic and capable of reacting to insults like injury and starvation. Recent work has highlighted the key role of dedifferentiation as a conserved mechanism for replenishing stem cell pools after their loss, thereby maintaining tissue homeostasis. The testis of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster offers a simple but powerful system to study dedifferentiation, the process by which differentiating spermatogonia can revert their fate to become fully functional germline stem cells (GSCs). Dedifferentiated GSCs show interesting characteristics, such as being more proliferative than their wild-type sibling GSCs. To facilitate the study of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the process of germline dedifferentiation in the Drosophila testis, here we describe techniques for inducing high rates of dedifferentiation and for unambiguously labeling dedifferentiated GSCs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Wang L, McLeod CJ, Jones DL (2011) Regulation of adult stem cell behavior by nutrient signaling. Cell Cycle 10(16):2628–2634
Lopez-Otin C et al (2013) The hallmarks of aging. Cell 153(6):1194–1217
Merrell AJ, Stanger BZ (2016) Adult cell plasticity in vivo: de-differentiation and transdifferentiation are back in style. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 17(7):413–425
Brawley C, Matunis E (2004) Regeneration of male germline stem cells by spermatogonial dedifferentiation in vivo. Science 304(5675):1331–1334
Kai T, Spradling A (2004) Differentiating germ cells can revert into functional stem cells in Drosophila melanogaster ovaries. Nature 428(6982):564–569
Sheng XR, Brawley CM, Matunis EL (2009) Dedifferentiating spermatogonia outcompete somatic stem cells for niche occupancy in the drosophila testis. Cell Stem Cell 5(2):191–203
Greenspan LJ, de Cuevas M, Matunis E (2015) Genetics of gonadal stem cell renewal. Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol 31:291–315
Cheng J et al (2008) Centrosome misorientation reduces stem cell division during ageing. Nature 456(7222):599–604
Yang H, Yamashita YM (2015) The regulated elimination of transit-amplifying cells preserves tissue homeostasis during protein starvation in drosophila testis. Development 142(10):1756–1766
Herrera SC, Bach EA (2018) JNK signaling triggers spermatogonial dedifferentiation during chronic stress to maintain the germline stem cell pool in the drosophila testis. elife 7(7):e36095
McLeod CJ et al (2010) Stem cell dynamics in response to nutrient availability. Curr Biol 20(23):2100–2105
Evans CJ et al (2009) G-TRACE: rapid Gal4-based cell lineage analysis in drosophila. Nat Methods 6(8):603–605
McKearin D, Ohlstein B (1995) A role for the drosophila bag-of-marbles protein in the differentiation of cystoblasts from germline stem cells. Development 121(9):2937–2947
Schindelin J et al (2012) Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis. Nat Methods 9(7):676–682
Chen D, McKearin DM (2003) A discrete transcriptional silencer in the bam gene determines asymmetric division of the drosophila germline stem cell. Development 130(6):1159–1170
Martin-Blanco E et al (1998) Puckered encodes a phosphatase that mediates a feedback loop regulating JNK activity during dorsal closure in drosophila. Genes Dev 12(4):557–570
Acknowledgments
Work in the Bach lab is supported by grants from the NIH and NYS Department of Health/NYSTEM. Work in the Herrera lab is supported by a grant from the Fundación Bancaria “la Caixa” (ID 100010434) with the code LCF/BQ/PI20/11760005.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Herrera, S.C., Bach, E.A. (2023). Spermatogonial Dedifferentiation into Germline Stem Cells in Drosophila Testes. In: Buszczak, M. (eds) Germline Stem Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2677. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3259-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3259-8_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3258-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3259-8
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols