The phenotype of the InR null clones comfort this hypothesis. When InR is overexpressed the level of Ac is significantly higher. This is confirmed by the IMARIS technique that estimated that in this genotype, the number of cells with the highest scores is larger than in the control strain. These “highly Ac-positive cells” seem to also be Sens positive cells indicating a correlation between the two events. In sca.InR the level of Sens, measured by the IMARIS technique is higher than in the test raising the possibility that InR regulates several neural genes independently. However another possibility would be that this high Sens expression level would be indirectly due to the induction by InR of a Sens-positive regulator such as sc. Several sc enhancers are regulated by InR, the sc promoter, and the SRV and DC enhancers. As sc is Echinatin auto-regulated through its different enhancers, it is difficult to evaluate if a specific enhancer is involved although the effect on the 3.8 kb sc promoter is the most striking. For FOXO the absence of FOXO using the FOXO RNAi strain shows that Ac is induced. The double expression of InR and hFOXO3a-TM produces an intermediate phenotype and decreases the effects of InR, on Ac and Sens expression. The results using the sc enhancers when hFOXO3a-TM is overexpressed showed that only a decrease in the expression of the SRV enhancer is observed. However, the phenotypes observed in sca.hFOXO3a-TM agree with the hypothesis of repression of ac and sc by hFOXO3a-TM. As expected, overexpression of FOXO RNAi induces sc-lacZ enhancer. Overexpression of both InR and sc leads to a significant increase in the effect of a single transgene. This indicates that both transgenes have a common target; one of them could be sc itself. An opposite effect is observed with hFOXO3a-TM. This favors the model whereby InR and FOXO act in opposite ways on the sc target in SOP LOUREIRIN-B formation. Highly significant genetic interactions are observed between sc and InR, and sc and FOXO. Another gene charlatan which is both upstream and downstream of sc, strongly interacts genetically with InR. Lateral inhibition is determined by the activity of the N receptor. When N is mutated, cell fate changes and extra macrochaete singling appear. Using the N deletion to test possible genetic interaction with InR and with FOXO in heterozygote females, interaction was observed with the InR RNAi strain. Moreover strong interaction is observed with InR overexpression. This indicates that InR impairs lateral inhibition and cooperates with N in this process. In parallel, as for Inr overexpression, the absence of nuclear FOXO either using FOXO25 homozygotes or FOXO RNAi overexpression induces an increase in the neurogenic phenotype. With this latter strain, tufted microchaetes were observed, indicating that FOXO could also act later in development. Overexpression of hFOXO3a-TM displays highly significant interaction with N55e11 as the neurogenic phenotype is increased compared to overexpression in a wild type background. However, overexpression of InR RNAi in a N55e11 hterozygote background leads to a significant increase but only at the level of aSC, raising the possibility of a local interaction or appearing at a specific time for the different clusters. Moreover the fact that there is no differences when Suppressor of Hairless ) which transduces the N pathway, is expressed with or without the InR, indicates that lateral inhibition is not affected. In addition in the InR strain, Sens stained cells were clearly individualized and separated from one another. These results clearly indicate that InR and FOXO act with N on the choice of the cell that will become an SOP.
The fact that the sensitive period occurs in the late second/beginning third instar is in accordance with this hypothesis
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