Fig. 3

TfAP-2 downregulation affects brain development. Downregulation of Drosophila TfAP-2 with pan-neuronal driver elavGal4 caused significant mushroom body developmental defects. In comparison to Control (A) TfAP-2 mutant brains (elav > AP-2 ^RNAi v101552) had slimmer (B, arrows) and/or disrupted (C, arrows) axonal projections of MB neurons visualized by anti-FasII staining (a marker for γ and α/β MB lobes). D The bar graph shows relative size of α/β MB lobes. Analysis of TfAP-2 protein expression in larval (E) and pupal (F) developing brains revealed no significant TfAP-2 expression in MB neuronal cell bodies (E–E″ marked with γ lobe marker 201Gal4 > CD8GFP) and (F–F″ marked with γ, α‘/β‘and α/β MB lobes marker MB247dsRed) but considerable TfAP-2 expression in pupal MB neuroblasts (F, arrows). MB calyces are outlined. (G, H) TfAP-2 reduction with elavGal4 driver did not have prominent effect on sNPF protein localization in the MBs and sNPF neuron-specific downregulation of TfAP-2 (I, J) did not cause significant reduction in sNPF mRNA levels