Protocol

Dissection Techniques for Pupal and Larval Drosophila Eyes

This protocol was adapted from "Histological Techniques for the Drosophila Eye Part I: Larva and Pupa," Chapter 12, in Drosophila Protocols (eds. Sullivan et al.). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA, 2000.

INTRODUCTION

The Drosophila eye has been used to study a broad range of topics, such as signal transduction, cell-fate specification, morphogenesis, and cell death. The eye has a relatively simple cellular architecture: the ommatidia (unit eyes of the compound eye) are composed of a small number of cells, and these cells can be readily identified on the basis of their shape and location within an ommatidium. Also, because the eye is a monolayer epithelium, all cells can be viewed in whole-mount preparations in both the larval imaginal disc and the pupal eye. Mosaic analysis is a powerful genetic tool that is routinely used in the eye to determine a given cell’s requirement for a gene of interest. Such analyses are possible because cell fates are determined on the basis of positional cues. Furthermore, pattern formation proceeds as a wave of morphogenesis sweeps across the eye disc. Thus, all early patterning events are laid out in a single imaginal disc preparation. A final attractive feature of the eye is that it is dispensable for viability and development, and therefore a number of tools have been developed for its manipulation.