Worniu, a Snail family zinc-finger protein, is required for brain development in Drosophila
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2004-09-15Keywords
Animals; Animals, Genetically Modified; Brain; Drosophila Proteins; Drosophila melanogaster; In Situ Hybridization; Larva; Phenotype; RNA Interference; Transcription Factors; Transgenes; Zinc FingersLife Sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The Snail family of zinc-finger transcriptional repressors is essential for morphogenetic cell movements, mesoderm formation, and neurogenesis during embryonic development. These proteins also control cell cycle, cell death, and cancer progression. In Drosophila, three members of this protein family, Snail, Escargot, and Worniu, have essential but redundant functions in asymmetric cell division of neuroblasts. In addition, Snail is critical for early mesoderm formation and Escargot is required for maintaining diploidy in wing imaginal disc cells. In this report, we demonstrate that Worniu plays a role in brain development. We show that alleles of the l(2)35Da complementation group are mutants of worniu. The developing larvae of these mutant alleles fail to shorten their brainstems. The brain phenotype, as well as the lethality, of these mutants can be rescued by worniu transgenes. Moreover, RNAi experiments targeting the worniu transcript show the same nonshortening phenotype in larval brains. worniu is expressed in the neuroblasts of brain hemispheres and ventral ganglions. The results suggest that the loss of Worniu function within the neuroblasts ultimately causes the larval brainstem to fail to go through shortening during development.Source
Dev Dyn. 2004 Oct;231(2):379-86. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1002/dvdy.20130Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/33904PubMed ID
15366015Related Resources
Link to article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/dvdy.20130