OSCR

Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo.

Overview

Authors: Girish Kale1,2, Pratika Agarwal1, J Jaime Diaz-Larrosa1, Steffen Lemke1,2
ORCID iDs: Girish Kale, J Jaime Diaz-Larrosa, Steffen Lemke
  1. Centre for Organismal Studies, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
  2. Institute of Biology, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany
Institutions: University of Hohenheim (Germany); Heidelberg University (Germany)
Journal: Nature communications, volume 17, issue 1, article 4601
Dates: received 10 July 2024; accepted 24 April 2026; published online 21 May 2026
Type: Research article · Language: English
License: CC BY
Identifiers: DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9 · PMID 42168215 · PMCID PMC13197460 · OpenAlex W7161975536
Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)
Status: code on request
Categories: other (organism), drosophila (organism), developmental (subfield)
Methods: Evoked potentials, Statistics, fMRI & imaging
Keywords: Cell biology, Developmental biology, Embryogenesis, Cell division
MeSH: Cell Nucleus Division*, Drosophila melanogaster*, Embryo, Nonmammalian*, Hot Temperature*, Actins, Animals, Blastoderm, Cell Nucleus, DNA Damage, Drosophila Proteins, Gastrulation, Microtubules, Mitosis, Temperature (* major topic)
Topic: Microtubule and mitosis dynamics (Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology), according to OpenAlex
Funding: Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) (LT000597/2019-L); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (LE 2787/3-1)
Citations: cited by 1 paper (Europe PMC); 79 references in the paper

Abstract

Temperature variations challenge animal survival, with elevated temperatures presenting distinct vulnerabilities throughout the animal life cycle. Embryonic development is especially vulnerable, though molecular mechanisms remain unclear. We address this in Drosophila melanogaster, an insect model with extensively characterized embryonic development. Here we show that pre-gastrulation development - syncytial blastoderm formation and cellularization - is particularly vulnerable to elevated temperature. Embryos exposed to elevated temperature during this period exhibit gastrulation defects and increased lethality. We observe mitotic failures causing loss of cortical nuclei during cellularization, preceded by a local nuclear crowding and increased division asynchrony; both features cooperatively amplify mitotic failures, leading to blastoderm holes. Mitotic failures trigger DNA damage response due to weakened cytoskeletal interaction. Genetic rescue experiments support the hypothesis that cortical F-actin and astral microtubule interaction is disrupted at elevated temperatures, causing mitotic failures. We propose that expression levels of corresponding genes could predict how increasing temperature variations affect insect populations.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

The paper says that its authors' code is available on request: it was not published with the paper, so there is nothing to verify.

Code availability

Codes were developed for batch processing of images, and are available upon request from corresponding authors. The codes developed in the study are used exclusively for automation and have no bearing on the results.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Tracing map

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Data

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Data availability

Any associated raw data are available upon request from corresponding authors. Source data are provided with this paper.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 4 authors, 4 keywords, 14 MeSH terms, 2 funders, 73 references.

Cite

This paper

Kale, G., Agarwal, P., Diaz-Larrosa, J. J., & Lemke, S. (2026). Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo. Nature communications, 17(1), 4601. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9

BibTeX

@article{kale2026elevated,
author = {Kale, Girish and Agarwal, Pratika and Diaz-Larrosa, J Jaime and Lemke, Steffen},
title = {{Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo}},
journal = {Nature communications},
year = {2026},
month = may,
volume = {17},
number = {1},
pages = {4601},
publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
issn = {2041-1723},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9},
pmid = {42168215},
pmcid = {PMC13197460}
}

RIS

TY - JOUR
AU - Kale, Girish
AU - Agarwal, Pratika
AU - Diaz-Larrosa, J Jaime
AU - Lemke, Steffen
TI - Elevated temperature fatally disrupts nuclear divisions in the early Drosophila embryo
T2 - Nature communications
J2 - Nat Commun
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/21
VL - 17
IS - 1
SP - 4601
SN - 2041-1723
PB - Nature Publishing Group
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72982-9
LA - en
ER -

CSL-JSON

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