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      First person – Shannon Taylor

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      Biology Open
      The Company of Biologists Ltd

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          ABSTRACT

          First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Shannon Taylor is first author on ‘ The torso-like gene functions to maintain the structure of the vitelline membrane in Nasonia vitripennis, implying its co-option into Drosophila axis formation ’, published in BiO. Shannon is a Master's student in the lab of Peter Dearden at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, investigating evolution and development (EvoDevo) and the philosophy of science, thus far using Nasonia as a model species to study various EvoDevo questions.

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          The torso-like gene functions to maintain the structure of the vitelline membrane in Nasonia vitripennis, implying its co-option into Drosophila axis formation

          ABSTRACT Axis specification is a fundamental developmental process. Despite this, the mechanisms by which it is controlled across insect taxa are strikingly different. An excellent example of this is terminal patterning, which in Diptera such as Drosophila melanogaster occurs via the localized activation of the receptor tyrosine kinase Torso. In Hymenoptera, however, the same process appears to be achieved via localized mRNA. How these mechanisms evolved and what they evolved from remains largely unexplored. Here, we show that torso-like, known for its role in Drosophila terminal patterning, is instead required for the integrity of the vitelline membrane in the hymenopteran wasp Nasonia vitripennis. We find that other genes known to be involved in Drosophila terminal patterning, such as torso and Ptth, also do not function in Nasonia embryonic development. These findings extended to orthologues of Drosophila vitelline membrane proteins known to play a role in localizing Torso-like in Drosophila; in Nasonia these are instead required for dorso–ventral patterning, gastrulation and potentially terminal patterning. Our data underscore the importance of the vitelline membrane in insect development, and implies phenotypes caused by knockdown of torso-like must be interpreted in light of its function in the vitelline membrane. In addition, our data imply that the signalling components of the Drosophila terminal patterning systems were co-opted from roles in regulating moulting, and co-option into terminal patterning involved the evolution of a novel interaction with the vitelline membrane protein Torso-like. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.
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            Author and article information

            Journal
            Biol Open
            Biol Open
            BIO
            biolopen
            Biology Open
            The Company of Biologists Ltd
            2046-6390
            15 September 2019
            15 September 2019
            15 September 2019
            : 8
            : 9
            : bio047860
            Article
            BIO047860
            10.1242/bio.047860
            6777366
            9ab4e3e0-acfd-46f3-88ae-2300a410f9ce
            © 2019. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

            This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

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            Life sciences
            Life sciences

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