Regulative Interactions Between Cells from Different Imaginal Disks of Drosophila melanogaster

The regulative behavior of cells from the imaginal wing disk of Drosophila melanogaster can be modified by interaction with cells from different disk types. Both thoracic and nonthoracic disks are able to interact, but there are major differences in the effectiveness of interaction. The finding lends experimental support to the idea that cells in different fields within the same organism use the same mechanism for specifying positional information. A similar conclusion has been reached by Wilcox and Smith based on studies of the mutation wingless.