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Updated: Feb 26, 2026

Dissection and Live-Imaging of the Late Embryonic Drosophila Gonad
Published on: October 17, 2020
Repression of Abd-B by Polycomb is critical for cell identity maintenance in adult Drosophila testis
Shuo Zhang1, Chenyu Pan1, Xiangdong Lv1
1CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Innovation Center for Cell Signaling Network, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200031, China.
Abstract:
Hox genes play a fundamental role in regulating animal development. However, less is known about their functions on homeostasis maintenance in adult stem cells. Here, we report that the repression of an important axial Hox gene, Abdominal-B (Abd-B), in cyst stem cells (CySCs) is essential for the homeostasis and cell identity maintenance in the adult Drosophila testis. Derepression of Abd-B in CySCs disrupts the proper self-renewal of both germline stem cells (GSCs) and CySCs, and leads to an excessive expansion of early stage somatic cells, which originate from both lineages. We further demonstrate that canonical Polycomb (Pc) and functional pathway of Polycomb group (PcG) proteins are responsible for maintaining the germline cell identity non-autonomously via repressing Abd-B in CySCs in the adult Drosophila testis.
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