title: Establishment of dorsal-ventral polarity in the Drosophila embryo: the induction of polarity by the Toll gene product.
abstract: Drosophila females that lack Toll gene activity produce dorsalized embryos, in which all embryonic cells behave like the dorsal cells of the wild-type embryo. Injection of wild-type cytoplasm into young Toll- embryos restores their ability to produce a normal dorsal-ventral pattern in a position-dependent manner. No matter where the cytoplasm is injected relative to the dorsal-ventral axis of the egg shell, the position of the injected cytoplasm defines the ventralmost part of the rescued pattern. Although injection of wild-type cytoplasm into mutants at six other dorsal-group loci also restores the ability to produce lateral and ventral structures, only Toll- embryos lack any residual dorsal-ventral polarity. Experiments suggest that the activity of the Toll product is normally regulated by other dorsal-group genes and that the function of the Toll product is to provide the source for a morphogen gradient in the dorsal-ventral axis of the wild-type embryo.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics*; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000166:cytology*; D005260:Female; D005775:Gastrula / Q000166:cytology; D005799:Genes, Dominant; D005808:Genes, Recessive; D009154:Mutation; D010641:Phenotype; D013045:Species Specificity