This suggests that fruit fly’s alula may be a reduced vannus, meaning Drosophila wings are just one-third of the ancestral insect wing. To understand how wings evolved into today’s wild diversity, we need to look beyond flies to other broad winged insects like butterflies, moths & more. (5/6)

Knockdown of mirror in fruit fly wings results in the loss of a proximal-posterior lobe called the “alula” – a membranous structure present exclusively in some #Diptera like fruit flies (doi.org/10.1242/dev....). (4/6)

"mirror" is not only expressed in this posterior region of the wing disc, but #CRISPR knockouts result in mosaics where the vannus is entirely lost or partially reduced accompanied by vein anomalies and the spread of color patterns! (3/6)

The posterior part of wings in broad winged insects like butterflies has a lobe like region called “vannus” which is bordered by the anal (2A) vein. Across butterfly families, the vannus is usually characterized by distinct silver scales and devoid of color patterns like the rest of the wing. (2/6)

Very excited to share the first chapter of my PhD thesis out in @elife.bsky.social : doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

We discovered how the gene "mirror" is necessary for specifying the “vannus”, a unique domain in the posterior part of butterfly wings. 🦋🦋 (1/6)

#CRISPR #butterfly #genomics