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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Jul 25.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Top Dev Biol. 2016 Feb 13;116:679–707. doi: 10.1016/bs.ctdb.2015.11.024

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Germ plasm assembly

a. Multiple controls described in Fig 1 and 2 feed into the localization and translation of osk. Osk protein recruits other components of the germplasm such as Vasa, Tudor and Aubergine. Symmetric dimethylation of Arginine (sDMA) in Vasa and Aubergine by the methyltransferase Capsuleen allow binding to Tudor domain proteins (Kirino et al., 2010a; Kirino et al., 2010b; Liu et al., 2010; Webster et al., 2015). This together with liquid to gel phase transitions could provide a possible basis for the dense assembly of polar granules.

b. Model for phase transition that occurs at posterior pole when concentration of germ plasm protein and RNAs become high (Brangwynne, 2013).

c. SIM image of nos and gcl RNA hybridization using Stellaris© RNA in situ hybridization probes. C’ higher magnification to reveal particle overlap.

d. Germ plasm with polar granules marked by Vasa (filled arrow) and mitochondria (open arrow).

e. Organization of homotypic RNA clusters within polar granules according to (Trcek et al., 2015).