A refutation to ‘A new A-P compartment boundary and organizer in holometabolous insect wings’

Abstract

We respond to a recent report by Abbasi and Marcus who present two main findings: first they argue that there is an organiser and a compartment boundary within the posterior compartment of the butterfly wing. Second, they present evidence for a previously undiscovered lineage boundary near wing vein 5 in Drosophila , a boundary that delineates a “far posterior” compartment. Clones of cells were marked with the yellow mutation and they reported that these clones always fail to cross a line close to vein 5 on the Drosophila wing. In our hands yellow proved an unusable marker for clones in the wing blade and therefore we reexamined the matter. We marked clones of cells with multiple wing hairs or forked and found a substantial proportion of these clones cross the proposed lineage boundary near vein 5, in conflict with their findings and conclusion. As internal controls we showed that these same clones respect the other two well established compartment boundaries: the anteroposterior compartment boundary is always respected. The dorsoventral boundary is mostly respected, and is crossed only by clones that are induced early in development, consistent with many reports. We question the validity of Abbasi and Marcus’ conclusions regarding the butterfly wing but present no new data. Arising from: R. Abbasi and J. M. Marcus Sci . Rep . 7 , 16337 (2017); 10.1038/s41598-017-16553-5.

Mapping of Supramolecular Chirality in Insect Wings by Microscopic Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy: Heterogeneity in Protein Distribution

“…Insect wings are interesting and attractive models for bioinspired and biomimetic materials because of their multifunctional characteristics, such as flying motion, antireflection, antihydrogenic, and photonic properties. − One fundamental problem is to unravel how these functions are realized in relation to the hierarchical organization of the component biomaterials. To investigate the nano- and microscale structures of insect wings, a number of spectroscopic and morphological methods have been applied, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy, solid-state NMR spectroscopy, synchrotron IR spectroscopy, and two-dimensional IR microscopy. − For example, dragonfly wing structures were systematically investigated by FTIR microscopy analysis . The main components, such as lipids and proteins, were identified from the peaks assigned to the CO stretching of ester (lipid) and amide I (protein).…”

mirrordetermines the far posterior domain in butterfly wings

“…8 Interestingly, however, D. melanogaster work has yet to reveal clear evidence for additional AP domain boundaries in the wing. It has thus been a matter of significant interest and controversy whether additional AP wing domains might occur in other insects, 9-11 as their existence would provide an explanatory model for the modular diversification of insect wing morphology.…”