EB-SUN, a new microtubule plus-end tracking protein in Drosophila

Microtubule (MT) regulation is essential for oocyte development. In Drosophila, MT stability, polarity, abundance, and orientation undergo dynamic changes across developmental stages. In our effort to identify novel microtubule-associated proteins that regulate MTs in the Drosophila ovary, we identified a previously uncharacterized gene, CG18190, which encodes a novel MT end-binding (EB) protein, which we propose to name EB-SUN. We show that EB-SUN colocalizes with EB1 at growing MT plus-ends in Drosophila S2 cells. Tissue-specific and developmental expression profiles from Paralog Explorer reveal that EB-SUN is predominantly expressed in the ovary and early embryos, while EB1 is ubiquitously expressed. Furthermore, as early as oocyte determination, EB-SUN comets are highly concentrated in oocytes during oogenesis. EB-SUN knockout (KO) results in decreased MT density at the onset of mid-oogenesis (stage 7) and delays oocyte growth during late mid-oogenesis (stage 9). Combining EB-SUN KO with EB1 knockdown (KD) in germ cells significantly further reduces MT density at stage 7. Hatching assays of single protein depletion reveal distinct roles for EB-SUN and EB1 in early embryogenesis, likely due to differences in their expression and binding partners. Notably, all eggs from EB-SUN KO/EB1 KD females fail to hatch, suggesting partial redundancy between these proteins.