Figure 1.

Compromising CG3838/brwl function in the female germline uncovers age dependent ovarian phenotypes. (A-B) Reduction of brwl transcripts in the female germline by expressing brwl TRiP VALIUM22 RNAi line, using nos-Gal4 leads to sterility and a variety of ovarian defects in the adult female. Major morphological defects include fused ovarioles and pycnotic nuclei. (C) Brwl:GFP expresses in the nuclei of both germline and somatic cells. The staining resembles the expression of a Stwl protein trap line (Kelso et al. 2004) (Buszczak et al. 2007). The arrows indicate expression in nuclei of both germline (nurse cells) and the soma (follicle cells). (D-G) Ovarian defects are age dependent and manifested in the adult female 7-10 days (E-F) after of fly eclosion and the phenotypes are enhanced in older flies. 3 day old (D) animals show 100% normal oogenesis and lay fertile eggs while 18 day old (G) animals show ∼100% degenerated egg chambers. Nuclei are marked with DAPI. ‘G’ marks the anterior i.e., germarial end of the egg chamber in all the figures. (H-K) Ovaries from females carrying brwl insertional alleles (brwl^KG0, brwl^MI0). The ovarioles are dissected from 10 day old females. Canton Special (Canton S) flies are used as controls. The oocytes show phenotypes similar to that of the brwl maternal RNAi knockdowns, with all ovarioles showing degenerating egg chambers by the 18^th day. (L) Quantitative data representing the percentage of ovarioles that show the phenotype on third, tenth (n = 80) and eighteenth (n = 25) day after fly eclosion. Ovaries from Canton-special (CS) animals were used as a control for statistical analyses. *, ** and *** denote P < 0.05, P < 0.01, and P < 0.001 respectively for this and all subsequent figures. N: number of adult females = 3-20 and n: number of ovarioles = 25-80.