Finkelstein R, Smouse D, Capaci T M, Spradling A C, Perrimon N
Department of Genetics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.
Genes Dev. 1990 Sep;4(9):1516-27. doi: 10.1101/gad.4.9.1516.
The orthodenticle (otd) locus of Drosophila is required for embryonic development, and null mutations of otd cause defects in head development and segmental patterning. We show here that otd is necessary for the formation of the embryonic central nervous system (CNS). otd mutations result in the formation of an abnormal neuropil and in the disappearance of identified neurons associated with the midline of the CNS. In addition, otd is allelic to ocelliless (oc), a mutation that causes the deletion of the ocelli of the adult fly. We have identified a transcription unit corresponding to the otd locus and find that it is expressed early in a stripe near the anterior pole of the cellular blastoderm and later in the region of the CNS from which these neurons normally arise. The predicted otd protein contains a well-conserved homeo domain and is therefore likely to be a transcriptional regulator involved in specifying cell fate both in the embryonic CNS and in the ocelli.
果蝇的正齿突基因（otd）位点对于胚胎发育是必需的，otd的无效突变会导致头部发育和体节模式形成出现缺陷。我们在此表明，otd对于胚胎中枢神经系统（CNS）的形成是必需的。otd突变导致异常神经纤维网的形成以及与CNS中线相关的特定神经元的消失。此外，otd与无单眼基因（oc）等位，oc突变会导致成年果蝇单眼缺失。我们鉴定出了一个与otd位点对应的转录单元，并发现它在细胞胚盘前极附近的一条带中早期表达，随后在这些神经元正常起源的CNS区域表达。预测的otd蛋白含有一个高度保守的同源结构域，因此很可能是一种转录调节因子，参与在胚胎CNS和单眼中确定细胞命运。
