Cuticle darkening correlates with increased body copper content in Drosophila melanogaster
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Cuticle darkening correlates with increased body copper content in Drosophila melanogaster Johana Va´squez-Procopio
. Subhash Rajpurohit
. Fanis Missirlis
Received: 2 June 2020 / Accepted: 29 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Insect epidermal cells secrete a cuticle that serves as an exoskeleton providing mechanical rigidity to each individual, but also insulation, camouflage or communication within their environment. Cuticle deposition and hardening (sclerotization) and pigment synthesis are parallel processes requiring tyrosinase activity, which depends on an unidentified copperdependent enzyme component in Drosophila melanogaster. We determined the metallomes of fly strains selected for lighter or darker cuticles in a laboratory evolution experiment, asking whether any specific element changed in abundance in concert with pigment deposition. The results showed a correlation between total iron content and strength of pigmentation, which was further corroborated by ferritin iron quantification. To ask if the observed increase in iron body content along with increased pigment deposition could be generalizable, we crossed yellow and ebony alleles causing light and dark pigmentation, respectively, into similar genetic backgrounds and measured their metallomes. Iron remained unaffected in the various mutants providing no support for a causative J. Va´squez-Procopio F. Missirlis (&) Departamento de Fisiologı´a, Biofı´sica y Neurociencias, Cinvestav, Zacatenco, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] S. Rajpurohit Division of Biological and Life Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Commerce Six Road, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
link between pigmentation and iron content. In contrast, the combined analysis of both experiments suggested instead a correlation between pigment deposition and total copper body content, possibly due to increased demand for epidermal tyrosinase activity. Keywords Color Elemental analysis Genetic background Melanin Zinc
Introduction Insect cuticle is the primary interface between an insect and its environment. It is a polymer network composed of chitin, protein derivatives, and hydrocarbons (Chapman 1998). Darkening of the cuticle is mostly due to non-lipid indole and catechol components, also referred to as cuticle pigments or melanin (Hackman and Goldberg 1971). In common to other insects, the epidermal cells of Drosophila melanogaster produce cuticle pigments during the final day of metamorphosis and the first hours after adult eclosion (Wittkopp and Beldade 2009; Wright 1987). The cuticle extracellular matrix is secreted through a developmental process initiated by the ecdysis neuropeptide signaling pathway (Davis et al. 2007; Luan et al. 2006) and further controlled by physiological (Shakhmantsir et al. 2014) and genetic (Gibert et al.
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Biometals
2007; Ostrowski et al. 2002) cues. Cuticle pigmentation occurs when melanin is deposited directly into the epidermi
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