Fig. 1.

Haemocyte development: role of Notch and relationship to Kc167 cells. (A) Drosophila lymph gland where larval haemocyte development gives rise to crystal cells (red) and plasmatocytes (green). Boxed area indicates the region shown in confocal images in this and subsequent figures. (B) The haemocyte lineage, specific markers and relevant Gal4 drivers are indicated. Notch and Lozenge (Lz) are required for crystal cells (red nuclei) to develop from Serpent (Srp)-expressing pro-haemocytes. (C) Expression of a general Notch-responsive reporter, NRE-GFP (green), indicates that Notch is active in Lz-expressing (red) crystal cell precursors. Arrows indicate examples of cells co-expressing Lz and NRE-GFP. (D) ModEncode measurements of relative mRNA expression levels of the indicated genes (He, hemese; Hml, hemolectin; Nim, Nimrod; srp, serpent; dome, domeless; twi, twist; N, Notch; vg, vestigial) in Kc167 cells compared with DmD8 (muscle precursor related) (Cherbas et al., 2011); haemocyte-related genes Hemolectin (Hml) and Hemese (He) are specifically expressed in Kc cells. (E) Lz is present in Kc167 cells; western blot of total cell extracts from the indicated cells was probed with α-Lz and α-Tub. The quantified ratio of Lz/Tub is indicated for each lane (arbitrary units). Cells pre-treated with dsRNA to ablate Lz (Kc LzRNAi) have reduced protein. Scale bar: 10 μm.