Anchor negatively regulates BMP signaling to control Drosophila wing 1 development 2 Running title : A novel

statement: The novel gene anchor is the ortholog of vertebrate GPR155, 9 which contributes to preventing wing disc tissue overgrowth and limiting the 10 phosphorylation of Mad in presumptive veins during the pupal stage. 11. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was. ABSTRACT 12 G protein-coupled receptors play a particularly important function in many organisms. 13 The novel Drosophila gene anchor is the ortholog of vertebrate GPR155, and its 14 molecular function and biological process are not yet known, especially in wing 15 development. Knocking down anchor resulted in increased wing size and extra and 16 thickened veins. These abnormal wing phenotypes are similar to those observed in 17 gain-of-function of BMP signaling experiments. We observed that the BMP signaling 18 indicator p-Mad was significantly increased in anchor RNAi-induced wing discs in 19 larvae and that it also abnormally accumulated in intervein regions in pupae. 20 Furthermore, the expression of BMP signaling pathway target genes were examined 21 using a lacZ reporter, and the results indicated that omb and sal were substantially 22 increased in anchor knockdown wing discs. In a study of genetic interactions between 23 Anchor and BMP signaling pathway, the broadened and ectopic vein tissues were 24 rescued by knocking down BMP levels. The results suggested that the function of 25 Anchor is to negatively regulate BMP signaling during wing development and vein 26 formation, and that Anchor targets or works upstream of Dpp. 27. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was .