shrub contributes to the follicular cell integrity in the panoistic ovary of Blattella germanica

Abstract

Cytokinesis is the physical process of cell separation in the cell division, in which the cytoplasm of a parental eukaryotic cell divides into two daughter cells. The cytoskeleton is crucial to carry out the cytokinesis. shrub encodes a filament-forming subunit of ESCRT-III (Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport) essential in the cell abscission, the last step of cytokinesis. In female germline stem cells of Drosophila melanogaster, shrub controls the timing of cell division by recruiting ESCRT-III complex in the midbody before the abscission and its absence stops germinal stem cells division. The current knowledge of the function of shrub in insect oogenesis is limited to germinal stem cells, and its role in ovarian somatic cells is still unknown. Our objective is to unveil the function of shrub in the oogenesis of adult cockroaches of Blattella germanica using RNA interference (RNAi). Experiments were performed injecting freshly emerged adult females with double-strand RNA (dsRNA) against shrub and dissecting insects at day 5.