Bosch Pablo Sanchez, Ziukaite Ruta, Alexandre Cyrille, Basler Konrad, Vincent Jean-Paul
Institute of Molecular Life Sciences, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
The Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom.
Elife. 2017 Jul 4;6:e22546. doi: 10.7554/eLife.22546.
Dpp, a member of the BMP family, is a morphogen that specifies positional information in wing precursors. In this tissue, Dpp expressed along the anterior-posterior boundary forms a concentration gradient that controls the expression domains of target genes, which in turn specify the position of wing veins. Dpp also promotes growth in this tissue. The relationship between the spatio-temporal profile of Dpp signalling and growth has been the subject of debate, which has intensified recently with the suggestion that the stripe of Dpp is dispensable for growth. With two independent conditional alleles of we find that the stripe of Dpp is essential for wing growth. We then show that this requirement, but not patterning, can be fulfilled by uniform, low level, Dpp expression. Thus, the stripe of Dpp ensures that signalling remains above a pro-growth threshold, while at the same time generating a gradient that patterns cell fates.
Dpp是骨形态发生蛋白（BMP）家族的成员，是一种在翅芽中指定位置信息的形态发生素。在该组织中，沿前后边界表达的Dpp形成浓度梯度，控制靶基因的表达域，进而确定翅脉的位置。Dpp还促进该组织的生长。Dpp信号的时空分布与生长之间的关系一直是争论的焦点，最近随着Dpp条带对生长可有可无的观点提出，争论愈演愈烈。利用两个独立的条件等位基因，我们发现Dpp条带对翅生长至关重要。然后我们表明，这种对生长的需求（而非模式形成）可以通过均匀的低水平Dpp表达来满足。因此，Dpp条带确保信号保持在促生长阈值以上，同时产生一个决定细胞命运的梯度。
