Sawa H, Lobel L, Horvitz H R
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA.
Genes Dev. 1996 Sep 1;10(17):2189-97. doi: 10.1101/gad.10.17.2189.
Mutations in the gene lin-17 result in the disruption of a variety of asymmetric cell divisions in Caenorhabditis elegans. We have found that lin-17 encodes a protein with seven putative transmembrane domains. The LIN-17 protein is most similar to the Drosophila Frizzled protein and its vertebrate homologs. Studies using a lin-17-green fluorescent protein translational fusion indicate that lin-17 is expressed in mother cells before asymmetric cell divisions and in both daughter cells after the divisions. Our results suggest that lin-17 encodes a receptor that regulates the polarities of cells undergoing asymmetric cell divisions and raise the possibility that the LIN-17 protein acts as a receptor for the Wnt protein LIN-44, which also controls asymmetric cell divisions.
lin-17基因的突变会导致秀丽隐杆线虫多种不对称细胞分裂的紊乱。我们发现lin-17编码一种具有七个推定跨膜结构域的蛋白质。LIN-17蛋白与果蝇卷曲蛋白及其脊椎动物同源物最为相似。使用lin-17-绿色荧光蛋白翻译融合体的研究表明，lin-17在不对称细胞分裂前在母细胞中表达，在分裂后的两个子细胞中也有表达。我们的结果表明，lin-17编码一种调节不对称细胞分裂细胞极性的受体，并增加了LIN-17蛋白作为Wnt蛋白LIN-44受体的可能性，LIN-44也控制不对称细胞分裂。
