Visualization of the development of Drosophila embryos with a Polycomb-GFP
fusionprotein
The movies presented here are meant as an addendum to our article
Dietzel, S., H. Niemann, B. Brückner, C. Maurange and R. Paro (1999).
The nuclear distribution of Polycomb during Drosophila melanogaster
development shown with a GFP fusion protein.
Chromosoma
, 108(2):83-94. (
Abstract)
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Introduction
In the four movies presented here, PC-GFP is used as a nuclear marker to
follow the development of the embryo over time, starting shortly before blastoderm
stage. During blastoderm the large fluorescent nuclei can be seen as bright
dots on a black background. In the later stages with more and smaller nuclei
the dots tend to fuse at the given low resolution. The autofluorescent chorion
(the outer shell of the egg) and in later stages the autofluorescent guts
are also visible. Until nuclear cycle 14 all nuclei in the Drosophila embryo
divide synchronously in a syncytium where no new cell membranes are formed.
Thus, at this stage the embryo is one multinuclear cell. When the nuclear
membrane breaks down during mitosis, the nuclear content thus can leak unrestricted
into the embryonic cytoplasm. In the movies, it can be observed in these
stages that the bulk of the PC-GFP seems to disappear and then reappear during
mitosis. This is due to the sudden distribution of the fluorescent molecules
in a much larger volume, thus the signal to noise ratio decrease dramatically.
For furher information on Drosophila embryonic development see Foe et al.
(in: The Development of Drosophila melanogaster, 1993, M. Bate and A. M.
Arias. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, pp 149-300).
Legends
In all movies the embryo is viewed laterally, the ventral side left
and anterior towards the top of the image. Image size is 0.5 mm from top to
bottom. The stack of four (or five) confocal sections shown in each frame
was recorded at one time point (that is, of course, consecutively, one section
after the other, starting with the one at the bottom. The scanning of one
image stack took 55 seconds). The bottom section is relatively close to the
center of the embryo, the top section is grazing through the outer edge of
the embryo.
The first two movies show the embryo from the blastula stage until
hatching of the larvae which can be observed at the end of these movies.
The hatching of the larva at the end of the movie demonstrates that the observation
conditions, e.g. phototoxicity, were not lethal. The waiting time between
the recording of two stacks is 15 minutes in these movies (excluding
scanning time). The first movie contains 126 frames, the total duration is
thus about 33 hours, the second movie has 130 frames, thus spanning about
34 hours. During the later stages of embryonic development the embryo starts
to move within the egg. Since it took about 14 seconds to record one image
(frame averaged), the images are somewhat blurred due to that motion . The
movement of the larvae also caused the rotation of the egg towards the end
of movie 1.
The third movie focuses on early stages. It starts before blastoderm
and ends after germband retraction. Recording conditions were as above except
that there was a variable waiting time between stacks: 5 minutes between
the first 121 stacks, thereafter 30 minutes (each including 55 seconds scanning
time). The larger intervals start at the beginning of germband retraction.
The 140 frames thus add up to 120x5 +19x30 min = 19 hours 30 minutes. Nuclei
become visible when they get to the surface of the embryo to form the blastoderm
(10th frame of the movie). Cycle 14 can be easily distinguished from earlier
cycles by the longer duration and the lack of mitotic waves thereafter. Then
one can count backwards through the mitotic waves to determine when the nuclei
reached the surface: It is during cycle 10 (in agreement with the literature).
The fourth movie starts before blastoderm and stops somewhat after
pole cell movement begins. Delay between frames is 6 minutes (including scanning)
and 34 frames are shown, adding up to 3 hours 18 minutes. As in movie 3,
the nuclei are visible first during cycle 10.
Methods:
Embryos were mounted in paraffin (1-3) or voltalef (4) oil on a coverslip.
The chorion was not removed and the chorion extensions were used to orient
the embryos under a binocular. Then the coverslip was mounted on the inverted
Leica
TCS NT microscope of the ZMBH
. Excitation wavelength was 488 nm, a dichroic mirror at 500 nm and
a bandpass 500 - 550 nm were used. Confocal sections were recorded at a low
magnification (20x dry lens) so that the complete embryo could be imaged.
The recording was performed at room temperature, around 22 Centigrade (72
F). The scanning of one image stack took 55 seconds for 1-3 and 60 seconds
for 4). The left section is relatively close to the center of the embryo,
the right section is grazing through the outer edge of the embryo. The images
were transferred from the microscope to a Mac, further processed in
NIH Image
(e.g. reduced in size by a factor of 2) and saved as Quicktime Movies.
Download section
All movies are in Quicktime Format. You can download a Quicktime player for
Macintosh or Windows from Apple's
Web site
if you need to, but if you have a newer Version of these operating
systems, chances are that you already have one, even if you don't know it.
Warning: These files
are relatively large. You certainly do not want to download them via modem
if you have to pay your phone bill by the minute. I offer two options for
the download:
Option 1: Download via Web page. All four
movies are embedded in this Web page
. You will need a Browser with Quicktime Plug-in installed to see them. This
is certainly the more convenient option if you have a fast internet connection
to our site or if you want to download them all anyway. The combined file
size of the movies is about 24 Mbytes.
Option 2: Download only those movies you are
interested in from the table below. If you do not have a Quicktime Plug-in
installed, your browser should ask you what to do with the files and offer
the option to save them to disk.
Last Update: 4. September 2000
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