Distinct regulation of atonal in a visual organ of Drosophila: Organ-specific enhancer and lack of autoregulation in the larval eye

Abstract Drosophila has three types of visual organs, the larval eyes or Bolwig's organs (BO), the ocelli (OC) and the compound eyes (CE). In all, the bHLH protein Atonal (Ato) functions as the proneural factor for photoreceptors and effects the transition from progenitor cells to differentiating neurons. In this work, we investigate the regulation of ato expression in the BO primordium (BOP). Surprisingly, we find that ato transcription in the BOP is entirely independent of the shared regulatory DNA for the developing CE and OC. The core enhancer for BOP expression, ato BO , lies ~6 kb upstream of the ato gene, in contrast to the downstream location of CE and OC regulatory elements. Moreover, maintenance of ato expression in the neuronal precursors through autoregulation—a common and ancient feature of ato expression that is well-documented in eyes, ocelli and chordotonal organs—does not occur in the BO. We also show that the ato BO enhancer contains two binding sites for the transcription factor Sine oculis (So), a core component of the progenitor specification network in all three visual organs. These binding sites function in vivo and are specifically bound by So in vitro . Taken together, our findings reveal that the control of ato transcription in the evolutionarily derived BO has diverged considerably from ato regulation in the more ancestral compound eyes and ocelli, to the extent of acquiring what appears to be a distinct and evolutionarily novel cis -regulatory module.