Mörck Catarina, Vivekanand Vivekanand, Jafari Gholamali, Pilon Marc
Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Gothenburg S-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.
BMC Dev Biol. 2010 May 24;10:55. doi: 10.1186/1471-213X-10-55.
Teneurins are transmembrane proteins that assist morphogenetic processes in many organisms. ten-1 is the C. elegans teneurin homolog with two transcripts, ten-1a and ten-1b, that respectively encode a long (TEN-1L) and short (TEN-1S) form of the protein. We previously isolated a C. elegans mutant where one pharyngeal neuron was frequently misplaced, and now show that it corresponds to a novel allele of ten-1.
The novel ten-1(et5) allele is a hypomorph since its post-embryonic phenotype is weaker than the null alleles ten-1(ok641) and ten-1(tm651). ten-1 mutants have defects in all pharyngeal neurons that we examined, and in vivo reporters show that only the long form of the ten-1 gene is expressed in the pharynx, specifically in six marginal cells and the M2 neurons. Defects in the pharyngeal M2 neurons were enhanced when the ten-1(ok641) mutation was combined with mutations in the following genes: mig-14, unc-5, unc-51, unc-52 and unc-129. None of the body neurons examined show any defects in the ten-1(ok641) mutant, but genetic interaction studies reveal that ten-1(ok641) is synthetic lethal with sax-3, unc-34 and unc-73, and examination of the hypodermal cells in embryos of the ten-1(ok641) mutant point to a role of ten-1 during hypodermal cell morphogenesis.
Our results are consistent with ten-1 normally providing a function complementary to the cytoskeletal remodeling processes that occur in migrating cells or cells undergoing morphogenesis. It is possible that ten-1 influences the composition/distribution of extracellular matrix.
Ten-1蛋白是一种跨膜蛋白,在许多生物体中协助形态发生过程。ten-1是秀丽隐杆线虫Ten-1蛋白的同源物,有两个转录本ten-1a和ten-1b,分别编码该蛋白的长形式(TEN-1L)和短形式(TEN-1S)。我们之前分离出一种秀丽隐杆线虫突变体,其中一个咽部神经元经常错位,现在发现它对应于ten-1的一个新等位基因。
新的ten-1(et5)等位基因是一个亚效等位基因,因为其胚胎后期表型比无效等位基因ten-1(ok641)和ten-1(tm651)弱。ten-1突变体在我们检测的所有咽部神经元中都有缺陷,体内报告基因显示,只有ten-1基因的长形式在咽部表达,特别是在六个边缘细胞和M2神经元中。当ten-1(ok641)突变与以下基因的突变结合时,咽部M2神经元的缺陷会增强:mig-14、unc-5、unc-51、unc-52和unc-129。在ten-1(ok641)突变体中检测的所有体神经元均未显示任何缺陷,但遗传相互作用研究表明,ten-1(ok641)与sax-3、unc-34和unc-73是合成致死的,对ten-1(ok641)突变体胚胎中的皮下细胞进行检查表明ten-1在皮下细胞形态发生过程中发挥作用。
我们的结果与ten-1通常提供一种与迁移细胞或正在经历形态发生的细胞中发生的细胞骨架重塑过程互补的功能一致。ten-1可能影响细胞外基质的组成/分布。