The cell adhesion molecule Rst-irreC is a transmembrane glycoprotein of the immunoglobulin superfamily involved in several important developmental processes in Drosophila, including axonal pathfinding in the optic lobe and programmed cell death and pigment cell differentiation in the pupal retina. As an initial step towards the "in vivo" functional analysis of this protein we have generated transgenic fly stocks carrying a truncated cDNA construct encoding only the extracellular domain of

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... reC under the transcriptional control of the heat shock inducible promoter hsp70. We show that heat-shocking embryos bearing the transgene during the first 8hs of development lead to a 3-4 fold reduction in their viability compared to wild type controls. The embryonic lethality can already be produced by applying the heat pulse in the first 3hs of embryonic development, does not seem to be suppressed in the absence of wildtype product and is progressively reduced as the heat treatment is applied later in embryogenesis. These results are compatible with the hypothesis of the lethal phenotype being primarily due to heterophilic interactions between Rst-IrreC extracellular domain and an yet unknown ligand.