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Letter

Nature Genetics 36, 1019–1023 (1 September 2004) | doi:10.1038/ng1404

Evidence for a fruit fly hemangioblast and similarities between lymph-gland hematopoiesis in fruit fly and mammal aorta-gonadal-mesonephros mesoderm

Lolitika Mandal , Utpal Banerjee & Volker Hartenstein

The Drosophila melanogaster lymph gland is a hematopoietic organ and, together with prospective vascular cells (cardioblasts) and excretory cells (pericardial nephrocytes), arises from the cardiogenic mesoderm. Clonal analysis provided evidence for a hemangioblast that can give rise to two daughter cells: one that differentiates into heart or aorta and another that differentiates into blood.