A View to Kill: Investigating the role of Yorkie in Drosophila Developmental Cell Death

De, Souvik (2025) A View to Kill: Investigating the role of Yorkie in Drosophila Developmental Cell Death. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

Text (MS Dissertation of Souvik De (20MS125)) 20MS125_Thesis_file.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB)

Abstract

Developmental cell death plays a crucial role in growth and tissue homeostasis in metazoan development. Recent reports suggest that the developmental nurse cell (NC) death during Drosophila oogenesis is an example of phagoptotic cell death. Drosophila egg chambers consist of 16 germline cells, which are encapsulated by a monolayer of somatic follicle cells. During late oogenesis, each NC is encapsulated by more than one morphogenetically altered Anterior Follicle Cell (AFC), also called Stretched Follicle Cell (SFC). These SFCs are reported to be an important component in regulating the Phagoptosis process. In this thesis, I explored the role of the transcriptional co-activator Yki during nurse cell removal. Yki is previously known to operate through the classical Hippo pathway, regulating growth and tissue patterning in Drosophila. Yki depletion in the FCs showed a delay in the envelopment pattern and despite a successful acidification and permeabilization of the NCs during stages 13 and 11, respectively. The egg chambers showed an intact nuclear membrane, which suggests the possible role of Yki in DNA fragmentation. Furthermore, I employed classical genetics and molecular biology techniques to identify a downstream transcriptional target of Yki, src42A, which also regulates the NC death mechanism. Altogether, these data suggest the Yki-src42A axis indeed plays one of the major roles during late oogenesis.

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