Fördernde Wirkung eines Eierstock-Hormons auf die Entwicklung larvaler Imaginalscheiben von Drosophila

Abstract

Several years ago Bodenstein found that larval eye antennae and leg-imaginal disks implanted in female flies, continue to develop while imaginal disks implanted in male flies do not progress. To determine if these differences are due to the hormone produced by the ripening ovary, discovered by E. Thomson in 1940, the author carried out 3 series of expts. In the first series, eye antennae and leg-imaginal disks of D. hydei larvae were implanted in sterile female D. melano-gaster flies of the genotypic constitution female-sterile, fes (homozygote). As was expected, no further development of the imaginal disks occurred. Such development occurred only in fertile D. melanogaster - females (fes +, heterozygote) with normal ovaries. Even when (2nd series) the imaginal disks were transplanted into J) hydei females, whose corpora allata and corpora cardiaca had been extirpated, no further development of the imaginal disks took place. If, however (3rd series), the larval imaginal disks were planted in D. hydei males, in which ovaries had been implanted previously, then the imaginal disks came to full development. The conjecture that the continued development of the imaginal disks is dependent on the stimulating influence of a hormone of the ovary is thus confirmed; possibly this hormone is identical with that which inhibits the growth of the cells of the corpus allatum.