cuticle

[Judocus]

Hello!
These might not be the questions you wanted to be asked in this forum, but I asked in different forums and a zoologist and no one could answer me. I hope you might. I am a student and I am writing a kind of review about Drosophilas cuticle, but I cannot find a picture or drawing of a section through the cuticular layers. That is why I decided to draw myself. Can you tell me if the german cockroachs cuticle is comparable to the one of Drosophila, where are the differences? Does Drosophila have a cement layer too, or is it found only upon moulting insects?
Thanks a lot in advance

[Josh Goodman]

I can't help you with differences between german cockroaches and Drosophila. However, I wanted to ask if you have tried looking for images in the FlyBase ImageBrowser? There are lots of pictures in there that should prove useful. In addition, you could do a search for all images annotated with a cuticle term by using TermLink.

• Go to TermLink
• Enter in cuticle in the search box and click "Search"
• Browse through the list of hits for terms that interest you.
• After clicking on a term browse down the term report to the section labeled Records annotated with this term or any of its children terms.
• In this section look for a box labeled Images and click on it. This will bring up all images annotated with this term.

I think that only terms with an FBbt ID will have images associated with them but I'm not 100%. Not all FBbt terms will have images associated with them.

Josh

[Judocus]

Yes, I tried them both, and found some useful pictures. But I was looking for a cut through the adult cuticle to explain the different layers from epidermis to lipid layer or cement layer. This I couldn`t find.
Thanks for you help anyway

[mroark]

Hi Judocus,

You might try publications. A google search for "drosophila cuticle layers" turned up the following among others:

Genetic control of epidermis differentiation in Drosophila.
François Payre
Int. J. Dev. Biol. (2004) 48: 207-215

It has a nice drawing of the layers of the cuticle.

Margo

[johnhemg]

The best I've seen Margo, thanks for the heads up.

[dosumis]

Hi Judocus,

Chapter 14 of the blue book (Bate and Martinez Arias, The development of Drosophila melanogaster, 1993) has useful info, images and references on this:

The metamorphic development of the adult epidermis.
FBrf0064790 == Fristrom and Fristrom, 1993, Bate, Martinez Arias, 1993: 843--897

As does
Poodry, Epidermis : Morphology and Development 1980
In: The Genetics and Biology of Drosophila (ed. M. Ashburner and T. R. F. Wright), vol. 2d: 443--497

Good luck,

David