Konrad K D, Goralski T J, Mahowald A P, Marsh J L
Developmental Biology Center and the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-2300, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 Jun 9;95(12):6819-24. doi: 10.1073/pnas.95.12.6819.
The establishment of dorsal-ventral polarity in the oocyte involves two sets of genes. One set belongs to the gurken-torpedo signaling pathway and affects the development of the egg chorion as well as the polarity of the embryo. The second set of genes affects only the dorsal-ventral polarity of the embryo but not the eggshell. gastrulation defective is one of the earliest acting of this second set of maternally required genes. We have cloned and characterized the gastrulation defective gene and determined that it encodes a protein structurally related to the serine protease superfamily, which also includes the Snake, Easter, and Nudel proteins. These data provide additional support for the involvement of a protease cascade in generating an asymmetric signal (i.e., asymmetric Spätzle activity) during establishment of dorsal-ventral polarity in the Drosophila embryo.
卵母细胞背腹极性的建立涉及两组基因。一组属于gurken - torpedo信号通路，影响卵壳的发育以及胚胎的极性。第二组基因仅影响胚胎的背腹极性，而不影响卵壳。原肠胚形成缺陷基因是这第二组母源必需基因中最早起作用的基因之一。我们已经克隆并鉴定了原肠胚形成缺陷基因，确定它编码一种在结构上与丝氨酸蛋白酶超家族相关的蛋白质，该超家族还包括蛇蛋白、复活节蛋白和Nudel蛋白。这些数据为蛋白酶级联反应在果蝇胚胎背腹极性建立过程中产生不对称信号（即不对称的斯佩兹尔活性）提供了额外的支持。
