Bridges under construction: the dynamics of ring canal expansion during Drosophila oogenesis

Intercellular bridges connect cells within tissues and organs across the animal kingdom, where they play important roles in cell-cell communication and coordination. Some of the most well-studied intercellular bridges are the ring canals that connect germline cells within the developing Drosophila egg chamber. The genetic, imaging, and biochemical tools available within this model system have generated a wealth of information about the proteins, pathways, and structures that regulate ring canal formation, stability, and expansion. In this review, we describe the important contributions that have been made to our understanding of ring canal biology, with an emphasis on the mechanisms that promote ring canal expansion. We describe accessible and reliable tools available to study these structures as well as ways in which more modern genetic, imaging, biochemical, and bioinformatics-based approaches could be applied to the study of ring canals within the egg chamber or in other tissues or organisms.