A cast of so-called ‘nurse cells’ surrounds and supports the growing fruit fly egg during development, supplying the egg — or ‘oocyte’ — with all the nutrients and molecules it needs to thrive. Long viewed as passive in this process, the Drosophila egg actually plays an active role not only in its own growth, but also in the growth of the surrounding nurse cells, Princeton University researchers report on March 21 in Developmental Cell.
“Here we show an example of bidirectional communication — a dialogue — between different cells. The egg is taking an active hand in controlling its own feeding by these supporting cells,” says Stanislav Shvartsman, head of the developmental dynamics group within the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Biology and professor of molecular biology at Princeton. The discovery of bidirectional communication in fruit flies has implications for understanding development in mammals, in which the egg is also nursed by surrounding cells.
…