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KMID : 0578320060210030436
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Molecules and Cells
2006 Volume.21 No. 3 p.436 ~ p.442
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Temporal and Spatial Expression of Homeotic Genes Is Important for Segment-specific Neuroblast 6-4 Lineage Formation in Drosophila
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Kang Sun-Young
Kim Su-Na
Jeon Sang-Hak
Kim Sang-Hee
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Abstract
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Different proliferation of neuroblast 6-4 (NB6-4) in the thorax and abdomen produces segmental specific expression pattern of several neuroblast marker genes. NB6-4 is divided to form four medialmost cell body glia (MM-CBG) per segment in thorax and two MM-CBG per segment in abdomen. As homeotic genes determine the identities of embryonic segments along theA/P axis, we investigated if temporal and specific expression of homeotic genes affects MM-CBG patterns in thorax and abdomen. A Ubx loss-of-function mutation was found to hardly affect MM-CBG formation, whereas abd-A and Abd-B caused the transformation of abdominal MM-CBG to their thoracic counterparts. On the other hand, gain-of-function mutants of Ubx, abd-A and Abd-B genes reduced the number of thoracic MM-CBG, indicating that thoracic MM-CBG resembled abdominal MM-CBG. However, mutations in Polycomb group (PcG) genes, which are negative transregulators of homeotic genes, did not cause the thoracic to abdominal MM-CBG pattern transformation although the number of MM-CBG in a few per-cent of embryos were partially reduced or abnormally patterned. Our results indicate that temporal and spa-tial expression of the homeotic genes is important to determine segmental-specificity of NB6-4 daughter cells along the anterior-posterior (A/P) axis.
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KEYWORD
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abd-A, Abd-B, MM-CBG, Neuroblast, PcG Genes, Ubx
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