Margaret de Cuevas, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Published online: January 2006
DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0001502
Oogenesis is the process by which germ cells develop into eggs. In Drosophila, this process takes about a week and is accompanied by complex interactions between many different cell types in and around the ovary.
Keywords: insect; ovary; oocyte; germ cell; fusome
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Figure 1. Diagram of a Drosophila ovary (a), ovariole (b), and egg chamber (c), not to scale. Anterior is up, posterior is down. The egg chamber depicted here is at stage 9. Germ cells are in white, somatic follicle cells are in grey, and the position of the oocyte is indicated (ooc).
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Figure 2. Diagram of a germarium. Anterior is up, posterior is down. The four regions of the germarium (1, 2a, 2b and 3) and position of the oocyte (ooc) are indicated. Locations of the different types of somatic cells are labelled, but individual cells are not drawn for clarity.
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Figure 3. Diagram of a cyst showing the pattern of connections between oocyte and nurse cells. The position of the oocyte is indicated (ooc).
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| Further Reading | |
| book Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J et al. (2002) Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edn. New York: Garland Science. | |
| book Büning J (1994) The Insect Ovary: Ultrastructure, Previtellogenic Growth and Evolution. New York: Chapman & Hall. | |
| Gilboa L and Lehmann R (2004) How different is Venus from Mars? The genetics of germ-line stem cells in Drosophila females and males. Development 131: 4895–4905. | |
| Huynh JR and St Johnston D (2004) The origin of asymmetry: early polarisation of the Drosophila germline cyst and oocyte. Current Biology 14: R438–R449. | |
| Mahowald AP (2001) Assembly of the Drosophila germ plasm. International Review of Cytology 203: 187–213. | |
| Pepling ME, de Cuevas M and Spradling AC (1999) Germline cysts: a conserved phase of germ cell development?. Trends in Cell Biology 9: 257–262. | |
| Saxton WM (2001) Microtubules, motors, and mRNA localization mechanisms: watching fluorescent messages move. Cell 107: 707–710. | |
| book Spradling AC (1993) "Developmental genetics of oogenesis". In: Bate M and Martinez-Arias A (eds) The Development of Drosophila melanogaster, vol. 1, pp. 1–70. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Press. | |
| Wodarz A (2002) Establishing cell polarity in development. Nature Cell Biology 4: E39–E44. | |
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