Fig. 3: Excessive amounts of apoptotic cell death impair macrophage dispersal.

a Lateral views of stage 13/14 control, repo, simu and simu;repo double-mutant embryos containing GFP-labelled macrophages. A complete line of macrophages is present on midline on the ventral side of the VNC in all genotypes, with the exception of simu;repo double mutants (gap indicated via an asterisk); a’ shows zoom of this region. b Scattergraph showing quantification of midline progression defects (numbers of segments lacking macrophages on the ventral side of the VNC); P < 0.0001 (for simu;repo vs each other genotype; no other comparisons are significantly different) via a Kruskall–Wallis test with a Dunn’s multiple comparaison post-test; n = 15 (controls), 17 (repo mutants), 15 (simu mutants) and 11 (simu;repo). c, d Ventral views of stage 13 control and repo mutant embryos containing GFP-expressing macrophages (immunostained via anti-GFP). e Scattergraph showing quantification of numbers of macrophages in five central segments on the ventral midline; P < 0.0001 via Mann–Whitney test, n = 13 (controls), 13 (repo mutants). Scale bars represent 50 μm (a) and 25 μm (c, d); lines and error bars on scattergraphs show mean and standard deviation, respectively; **** indicates P < 0.0001. Genotypes are w¹¹¹⁸;;crq-GAL4,UAS-GFP (control), w¹¹¹⁸;;P{PZ}repo⁰³⁷⁰²,crq-GAL4,UAS-GFP (repo⁰³⁷⁰²), w¹¹¹⁸;simu²;crq-GAL4,UAS-GFP (simu²) and w¹¹¹⁸;simu²;P{PZ}repo⁰³⁷⁰²,crq-GAL4,UAS-GFP (simu;repo).