These Broken Wings

Fruit flies (Drosophila) have many genes in common with humans – making them a mine for clues to our own genetics. While a mutation to one important fly gene, wingless, leaves Drosophila developing without wings, its human counterpart, Wnt, is found mutated in many cancers. Here the fly shares another secret – a specific enhancer region of DNA helps in switching wingless on or off – known as gene expression. The enhancer plays a role when wingless (highlighted in red, but appearing yellow in combination with other fluorescent labels here) is expressed during normal development of the early wing (middle). But the research team finds clues to another delicate balance – in injured wings (left), wingless is switched on to promote cell division and regeneration, but tumours result if gene expression is too strong (right). Perhaps another lesson from the fly – mutated or not, how and when a gene is used is equally important.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Elena Gracia-Latorre and Lidia Pérez, and colleagues
• Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Research published in Nature Communications, August 2022