Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, 5047 Gullen Mall, Detroit, Michigan 48202.
Integr Comp Biol. 2003 Aug;43(4):508-21. doi: 10.1093/icb/43.4.508.
The molecular genetic dissection of Drosophila eye development led to the exciting discovery of a surprisingly large panel of genes and gene activities, which are functionally conserved across phyla. Little effort has yet been made towards pinpointing non-conserved gene functions in the developing Drosophila eye. This neglects the fact that Drosophila visual system development is a highly derived process. The comparative analysis of Drosophila eye development within insects can be expected to enhance resolution and accuracy of between phyla comparisons of eye development, and to reveal molecular developmental changes that facilitated the evolutionary transition from hemimetabolous to holometabolous insect development. Here we review aspects of early Drosophila eye development, which are likely to have diverged from the situation in more primitive insects, as indicated by results from work in the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum and the grasshopper Schistocerca americana.
果蝇眼发育的分子遗传学剖析导致了令人兴奋的发现，即存在大量功能上在门之间保守的基因和基因活性。然而，人们几乎没有努力去确定在发育中的果蝇眼中非保守的基因功能。这忽视了一个事实，即果蝇视觉系统的发育是一个高度衍生的过程。在昆虫中比较分析果蝇眼的发育，可以预期会提高门之间的眼发育比较的分辨率和准确性，并揭示促进从半变态到全变态昆虫发育的进化转变的分子发育变化。在这里，我们回顾了早期果蝇眼发育的各个方面，这些方面可能已经与更原始的昆虫的情况有所不同，这一点从面粉甲虫 Tribolium castaneum 和美洲蚱蜢 Schistocerca americana 的研究结果中可以看出。
