Knust E, Leptin M
University of Cologne, Institut für Entwicklungsbiologie, Köln, Germany.
Bioessays. 1996 Aug;18(8):609-12. doi: 10.1002/bies.950180802.
The integrity of epithelia depends largely on specialised adhesive structures, the adherens junctions. Several of the components required for building these structures are highly conserved between vertebrates and insects (e.g. E-cadherin and alpha- and beta-catenin), while others have so far been found only in invertebrates (e.g. crumbs). Two recent papers(1,2) show that the Drosophila E-cadherin is encoded by the gene shotgun. Phenotypic analyses of shotgun as well as armadillo (beta-catenin) and crumbs mutants provide new insights into the mechanisms by which adherens junctions are built and, further, show that the requirement for E-cadherin largely depends on the morphogenetic activity of an epithelium.
上皮组织的完整性很大程度上取决于特殊的黏附结构，即黏着连接。构建这些结构所需的几种成分在脊椎动物和昆虫之间高度保守（例如E-钙黏蛋白以及α-连环蛋白和β-连环蛋白），而其他成分迄今仅在无脊椎动物中发现（例如crumbs）。最近的两篇论文（1,2）表明，果蝇的E-钙黏蛋白由shotgun基因编码。对shotgun以及犰狳（β-连环蛋白）和crumbs突变体的表型分析为黏着连接的构建机制提供了新的见解，并且进一步表明对E-钙黏蛋白的需求在很大程度上取决于上皮组织的形态发生活性。
