Blochlinger K, Jan L Y, Jan Y N
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco 94143.
Genes Dev. 1991 Jul;5(7):1124-35. doi: 10.1101/gad.5.7.1124.
The loss of cut activity results in a change in neural identity in the peripheral nervous system so that the neurons and support cells of external sensory (es) organs are transformed into those of internal chordotonal (ch) organs, cut encodes a large nuclear homeo domain protein (Cut) that is expressed in the differentiated cells of es organs and their precursors but not in the cells of ch organs. We now analyze the effects of ectopic Cut expression in transformant lines of flies containing the Cut-coding sequences under inducible regulatory control. We demonstrate that ubiquitous Cut expression in embryos results specifically in the morphologic and antigenic transformation of ch organs into es organs. This effect appears to involve positive autoregulation of Cut expression. We conclude that Cut is not only necessary but sufficient for the specification of es organ identify in sensory organ precursor cells and their progeny. The specificity of Cut function to sensory organ cells involves the proneural loci daughterless and the achaete-scute complex.
cut活性的丧失导致外周神经系统中神经特性的改变，使得外部感觉（es）器官的神经元和支持细胞转变为内部弦音（ch）器官的神经元和支持细胞。cut编码一种大型核同源结构域蛋白（Cut），该蛋白在es器官及其前体的分化细胞中表达，但不在ch器官的细胞中表达。我们现在分析了在诱导型调控控制下含有Cut编码序列的果蝇转化株中异位表达Cut的影响。我们证明，胚胎中普遍存在的Cut表达特异性地导致ch器官向es器官的形态和抗原转变。这种效应似乎涉及Cut表达的正向自调节。我们得出结论，Cut不仅是感觉器官前体细胞及其后代中es器官身份特化所必需的，而且是充分的。Cut功能对感觉器官细胞的特异性涉及神经原基因无女儿以及achaete-scute复合体。
