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Subdivision and developmental fate of the head mesoderm in Drosophila melanogaster

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In this paper, we define temporal and spatial subdivisions of the embryonic head mesoderm and describe the fate of the main lineages derived from this tissue. During gastrulation, only a fraction of the head mesoderm (primary head mesoderm; PHM) invaginates as the anterior part of the ventral furrow. The PHM can be subdivided into four linearly arranged domains, based on the expression of different combinations of genetic markers (tinman, heartless, snail, serpent, mef-2, zfh-1). The anterior domain (PHMA) produces a variety of cell types, among them the neuroendocrine gland (corpus cardiacum). PHMB, forming much of the “T-bar” of the ventral furrow, migrates anteriorly and dorsally and gives rise to the dorsal pharyngeal musculature. PHMC is located behind the T-bar and forms part of the anterior endoderm, besides contributing to hemocytes. The most posterior domain, PHMD, belongs to the anterior gnathal segments and gives rise to a few somatic muscles, but also to hemocytes. The procephalic region flanking the ventral furrow also contributes to head mesoderm (secondary head mesoderm, SHM) that segregates from the surface after the ventral furrow has invaginated, indicating that gastrulation in the procephalon is much more protracted than in the trunk. We distinguish between an early SHM (eSHM) that is located on either side of the anterior endoderm and is the major source of hemocytes, including crystal cells. The eSHM is followed by the late SHM (lSHM), which consists of an anterior and posterior component (lSHMa, lSHMp). The lSHMa, flanking the stomodeum anteriorly and laterally, produces the visceral musculature of the esophagus, as well as a population of tinman-positive cells that we interpret as a rudimentary cephalic aorta (“cephalic vascular rudiment”). The lSHM contributes hemocytes, as well as the nephrocytes forming the subesophageal body, also called garland cells.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. M. Frasch , T. Tabata, R. Renkawitz-Pohl, Z.C. Lai, H.T. Nguyen, R. White , A.M. Michelson, U. Banerjee, and J. Lengyel for providing us the fly stocks, cDNA, and antibodies. We would also like to thank the Bloomington Stock Center for fly stocks and the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project for some of the figures. This work was supported by a UCLA Dissertation Fellowship to B.d.V. and NIH grant NS29367 to V.H.

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  1. Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Begona de Velasco, Lolitika Mandal, Marianna Mkrtchyan & Volker Hartenstein

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  1. Begona de Velasco
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Correspondence to Volker Hartenstein.

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Communicated by S. Roth

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de Velasco, B., Mandal, L., Mkrtchyan, M. et al. Subdivision and developmental fate of the head mesoderm in Drosophila melanogaster . Dev Genes Evol 216, 39–51 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-005-0029-4

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