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Abstract
Haematopoietic progenitor activity in the Drosophila lymph gland can respond to stress. Banerjee and colleagues show that systemic insulin and nutritional signals maintain these progenitors by modulating Wingless-dependent pathways. The Drosophila lymph gland is a haematopoietic organ in which progenitor cells, which are most akin to the common myeloid progenitor in mammals, proliferate and differentiate into three types of mature cell—plasmatocytes, crystal cells and lamellocytes—the functions of which are reminiscent of mammalian myeloid cells1. During the first and early second instars of larval development, the lymph gland contains only progenitors, whereas in the third instar, a medial region of the primary lobe of the lymph gland called the medullary zone contains these progenitors2, and maturing blood cells are found juxtaposed in a peripheral region designated the cortical zone2. A third group of cells referred to as the posterior signalling centre functions as a haematopoietic niche3,4. Similarly to mammalian myeloid cells, Drosophila blood cells respond to multiple stresses including hypoxia, infection and oxidative stress5,6,7. However, how systemic signals are sensed by myeloid progenitors to regulate cell-fate determination has not been well described. Here, we show that the haematopoietic progenitors of Drosophila are direct targets of systemic (insulin) and nutritional (essential amino acid) signals, and that these systemic signals maintain the progenitors by promoting Wingless (WNT in mammals) signalling. We expect that this study will promote investigation of such possible direct signal sensing mechanisms by mammalian myeloid progenitors.Cite this article
Shim, J., Mukherjee, T. & Banerjee, U. Direct sensing of systemic and nutritional signals by haematopoietic progenitors in Drosophila. Nat Cell Biol 14, 394–400 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb2453 