Gene expression profiling of wing imaginal disc upon caspase activity inhibition

Caspase is best known as an enzyme involved in programmed cell death that is conserved in multicellular organisms. In addition to its role in cell death, caspase is emerging as an indispensable enzyme for a wide range of cellular functions, which have recently been termed as Caspase-Dependent non-lethal cellular Processes. We carefully examined the involvement of cell death signaling in tissue size determination using Drosophila wing as a model. We found that executioner caspase activity promoted wing growth independent of apoptosis. To identify the gene expression changes which account for the observed phenomena, we performed microarray analysis of wing imaginal disc upon caspase activity-inhibition by overexpressing p35. The analysis revealed the change in overall transcriptome, but not in the major tissue growth promoting signaling pathways. We collected total RNA from wing imaginal discs of wandering 3rd larvae. We used C10 > p35 larvae for caspase activity-inhibited group and C10 > GFP and C10 >LacZ larvae for control groups. N = 5 for each group.