TY - JOUR TI - Regulated delivery controls Drosophila Hedgehog, Wingless, and Decapentaplegic signaling AU - Hatori, Ryo AU - Wood, Brent M AU - Oliveira Barbosa, Guilherme AU - Kornberg, Thomas B A2 - Bronner, Marianne E VL - 10 PY - 2021 DA - 2021/07/22 SP - e71744 C1 - eLife 2021;10:e71744 DO - 10.7554/eLife.71744 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71744 AB - Morphogen signaling proteins disperse across tissues to activate signal transduction in target cells. We investigated dispersion of Hedgehog (Hh), Wnt homolog Wingless (Wg), and Bone morphogenic protein homolog Decapentaplegic (Dpp) in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc. We discovered that delivery of Hh, Wg, and Dpp to their respective targets is regulated. We found that <5% of Hh and <25% of Wg are taken up by disc cells and activate signaling. The amount of morphogen that is taken up and initiates signaling did not change when the level of morphogen expression was varied between 50 and 200% (Hh) or 50 and 350% (Wg). Similar properties were observed for Dpp. We analyzed an area of 150 μm×150 μm that includes Hh-responding cells of the disc as well as overlying tracheal cells and myoblasts that are also activated by disc-produced Hh. We found that the extent of signaling in the disc was unaffected by the presence or absence of the tracheal and myoblast cells, suggesting that the mechanism that disperses Hh specifies its destinations to particular cells, and that target cells do not take up Hh from a common pool. KW - hedgehog KW - wingless KW - decapentaplegic KW - cytoneme KW - dispersion JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -