RIGID CONSTRUCTION: The wing vein patterns of two flies deviate from one another by a width no greater than half a cell.THOMAS GREGOR
The paper L. Abouchar et al., “Fly wing vein patterns have spatial reproducibility of a single cell,” J R Soc Interface, 11:20140443, 2014. The embryo Multicellular organisms faithfully re-create the patterns of complex body structures from one generation to the next. Thomas Gregor’s lab at Princeton University previously showed that the initial body plan of three-hour-old fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) embryos varied, from one embryo to the next, by a total width no greater than half of a cell. This led Gregor to wonder whether wing patterns, which develop in 10-day-old flies, are just as precise. The wing Gregor and his colleagues used computer analysis and superimposition to measure and compare wing vein patterns in fruit flies. Even when grown at different temperatures, genetically similar ...
