Bénard Claire Y, Kébir Hania, Takagi Shin, Hekimi Siegfried
Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Dr Penfield Avenue, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1B1, Canada.
Development. 2004 Dec;131(23):5947-58. doi: 10.1242/dev.01433.
The gene mau-2 has been found to be required for the guidance of cellular and axonal migrations along both the anteroposterior and the dorsoventral body axes during the development of the nematode C. elegans. We show that mau-2 encodes a novel, previously uncharacterized protein that is highly conserved among animals. Maternal mau-2 gene expression is sufficient for normal development until the fourth larval stage, and a MAU-2::GFP fusion protein localizes to the cytoplasm of neurones. mau-2 is ubiquitously expressed in embryos by late gastrulation and becomes predominantly expressed in the nervous system as morphogenesis progresses. Expression of mau-2 within individual neurones rescues the guidance defects of mau-2 mutants, indicating that mau-2 functions cell-autonomously. Altering the activity of both the dorsal repellent slt-1 and mau-2 leads to the abnormal dorsal projection of the AVM axon, a phenotype that is novel and specific to the interaction of these two genes, indicating that mau-2 participates in the guidance of AVM by a slt-1-independent mechanism. Taken together, mau-2 defines a novel guidance factor that might be involved in the intracellular processing of guidance cues encountered by migrating cells and axons during development.
已发现基因mau-2对线虫秀丽隐杆线虫发育过程中细胞和轴突沿前后轴和背腹轴的迁移引导是必需的。我们表明，mau-2编码一种新的、以前未被表征的蛋白质，这种蛋白质在动物中高度保守。母体mau-2基因表达足以维持正常发育直至第四幼虫阶段，并且MAU-2::GFP融合蛋白定位于神经元的细胞质中。到原肠胚后期，mau-2在胚胎中广泛表达，并随着形态发生的进展在神经系统中占主导地位表达。mau-2在单个神经元内的表达挽救了mau-2突变体的引导缺陷，表明mau-2以细胞自主方式发挥作用。改变背侧排斥因子slt-1和mau-2的活性会导致AVM轴突异常向背侧投射，这是一种新的且特定于这两个基因相互作用的表型，表明mau-2通过一种不依赖slt-1的机制参与AVM的引导。综上所述，mau-2定义了一种新的引导因子，可能参与发育过程中迁移细胞和轴突遇到的引导线索的细胞内加工。
