Genetic analysis of a potential engulfment gene ina-1 and a proapoptotic gene cM9 in Caenorhabditis elegans
Date Issued
2005
Date
2005
Author(s)
Tzeng, Ruei-Ying
DOI
en-US
Abstract
During the development of multicellular organisms, programmed cell death (apoptosis) is a normally occurring process used to eliminate unnecessary cells. Engulfment is an essential process for clearance of cell corpse generated by apoptosis. Recent studies demonstrate that the molecular control of these processes is evolutionally conserved in metazoans. Integrins are a large family of heterodimeric cell surface receptors involved in cell adhesion, cell migration and signal transduction. INA-1 is C. elegans integrin α subunit that plays roles in neural development and DTC migration. We found that ina-1 mutations increased number of cell corpses in embryos and that this ina-1-mediated enhancement in cell-corpse number is through programmed cell death. This implies that ina-1 might be important in the engulfment process to remove cell corpses. Interestingly, ina-1 acts synergistically with previously identified engulfment genes, suggesting that ina-1 may act in parallel to these genes during programmed cell death and may define a new engulfment pathway in C. elegans.
M9 is human muscle specific protein. We found that animals bear a mutation in cM9 (which is C. elegans homolog of M9) decreased numbers of cell corpses throughout embryogenesis. We further showed that cM9 mutant animals had extra surviving cells in the ventral cord in the engulfment-defective ced-2 mutant background. Together these data suggested that cM9 function as a positive mediator during apoptosis in C. elegans. We also showed that cM9 acts synergistically with ced-3 (which is a caspase) to promote cell-killing, suggesting that cM9 may mediate apoptosis through a ced-3 independent pathway.
Subjects
線蟲
細胞凋亡
C. elegans
apoptosis
engulfment
Type
other
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