Figure 2

Mutating the mechanosensitivity of Cheerio disrupts egg development.

(a) Length of eggs produced by hemizygous females. The C-terminal deletion (s24) and MSR deletion (ΔMSR) led to short eggs. The integration of the wild type construct with or without GFP (WT GFP and WT MSR, respectively) rescued completely the phenotype. Both mutations affecting the MSR sensitivity gave intermediate phenotypes (closed MSR and open MSR). Horizontal lines indicate the mean values and bars standard deviations The number of the eggs measured (n) is given. (b) Illustrative brightfield images of measured eggs. (c) All forms of Cheerio localised normally to ring canals, actin-rich rings, during early and mid oogenesis (homozygous stage 4 egg chambers, upper panels; stage 8 egg chambers, lower panels). Maximum intensity projections are shown. The boxed areas are shown below as enlarged images generated with the bicubic smoother option in Photoshop. Scale bars 10 μm. (d,e) Ring canal outer diameters of MSR mutants decreased in both stage 4 and 8 when compared to WT-GFP. Mean + SD, ***P < 0.0001, unpaired t-test.