The cold-sensitive period for frizzled in the development of wing hair polarity ends prior to the start of hair morphogenesis

Abstract

The function of the frizzled (fz) gene is essential for the development of the normal pattern of hairs on the Drosophila wing. In the absence of fz function hairs develop, but they display an abnormal polarity. Mutations in fz result in an altered subcellular location for the assembly of the F-actin filled prehair that becomes the adult cuticular hair. This observation led to the suggestion that fz and other tissue polarity genes form a regulatory pathway that controls the initiation of prehairs. We have isolated a cold-sensitive fz allele and found that the cold-sensitive period for fz in the pupal wing starts in the early pupae and ends prior to the first sign of prehair morphogenesis. This cold-sensitive mutation is due to a missense mutation in a putative transmembrane domain. Western blot analysis shows that the accumulation of the mutant protein is not cold sensitive, consistent with the supposition that it is the activity of the mutant protein that is cold sensitive. Our data argue that fz has a regulatory function in specifying where the prehair forms, but no role in the actual morphogenesis of the prehair.