How organs coordinate their development with body

The development of wings in fruit flies does not progress synchronously with the organism's development, the findings showed. The study helps explain how an organism facing environmental and physiological perturbations retains the ability to build correct functional organs and tissues in a proportional adult body.

"With this work, we propose a new paradigm for thinking about organ-organ and organ-body coordination during development," said Marisa Oliveira from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciancia in Portugal.

"We suggest that organisms achieve this coordination not by continuous but rather by discrete communication focused on developmental milestones," Oliveira added.

The researchers studied how organ and whole-body development is coordinated, using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model organism. The juvenile period in the fruit fly comprises three larval moults, followed by a wandering stage where larvae leave the food and search for a site to begin metamorphosis at a stage called pauperization.

The research team focused on these so-called developmental events to study how the development of wings is coordinated with the whole body of the fruit fly larvae.

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