Bi-directional gap junction-mediated soma-germline communication during Drosophila spermatogenesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Soma-germline interactions play conserved essential roles in regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, patterning, and homeostasis in the gonad. In the Drosophila testis, the JAK-STAT, Hedgehog, BMP and EGF pathways are used to mediate soma-germline communication via paracrine signalling. In this thesis, I aim to shed light on the role of juxtacrine signalling, mediated by gap junction proteins, during early spermatogenesis in the fly testis. My analysis demonstrates that gap junctions also mediate direct, bi-directional signalling between the soma and germline. When gap junctions between the soma and germline are disrupted, germline differentiation is blocked and germline stem cells are not maintained. In the soma, gap junctions are required to regulate proliferation and differentiation. Gap junctions are present between germline and somatic stem cells, as well as between differentiating cells by ultrastructural analysis. Localization and RNAi-mediated knockdown studies reveal that gap junctions in the fly testis are heterotypic channels containing Zpg (Inx4) and Inx2 in the germline and in the soma, respectively. Preliminary structure-function analysis of Zpg reveals that the C-terminus of the protein is essential for its function. Furthermore, gap junctions in the testis may be important for mediating calcium signalling. Overall, my results show that bi-directional gap junction-mediated signalling is essential to coordinate the soma and germline to ensure proper spermatogenesis in Drosophila. Moreover, I show that stem cell maintenance and differentiation in the testis are directed by gap junction-derived cues.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".