The mesoderm determinant snail collaborates with related zinc-finger proteins to control Drosophila neurogenesis
Student Authors
Shovon Imtiaz AshrafUMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular BiologyDepartment of Cell Biology
Program in Molecular Medicine
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
1999-11-15Keywords
Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Animals, Genetically Modified; *Bacterial Proteins; Conserved Sequence; DNA-Binding Proteins; *Drosophila Proteins; Drosophila melanogaster; Embryo, Nonmammalian; Fushi Tarazu Transcription Factors; Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; Homeodomain Proteins; Molecular Sequence Data; Nervous System; Neurons; Sequence Alignment; Sequence Deletion; Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; Transcription Factors; Zinc FingersCell and Developmental Biology
Life Sciences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Neuroscience and Neurobiology
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Show full item recordAbstract
The Snail protein functions as a transcriptional regulator to establish early mesodermal cell fate. Later, in germ band-extended embryos, Snail is also expressed in most neuroblasts. Here we present evidence that this expression of Snail is required for central nervous system (CNS) development. The neural function of snail is masked by two closely linked genes, escargot and worniu. Both Escargot and Worniu contain zinc-finger domains that are highly homologous to that of Snail. Although not affecting expression of early neuroblast markers, the deletion of the region containing all three genes correlates with loss of expression of CNS determinants including fushi tarazu, pdm-2 and even-skipped. Transgenic expression of each of the three Snail family proteins can rescue efficiently the fushi tarazu defects, and partially the pdm-2 and even-skipped CNS patterns. These results demonstrate that the Snail family proteins have essential functions during embryonic CNS development, around the time of ganglion mother cell formation.Source
EMBO J. 1999 Nov 15;18(22):6426-38. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1093/emboj/18.22.6426Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/33915PubMed ID
10562554Related Resources
Link to article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/emboj/18.22.6426
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