Affiliation:
1. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard – Unit 117,Houston, TX 77030, USA
Abstract
The initiator caspase Dronc is the only Drosophila caspase that contains a caspase activation and recruitment domain (CARD). Although Dronc has been implicated as an important effector of apoptosis, the genetic function of dronc in normal development is unclear because dronc mutants have not been available. In an EMS mutagenesis screen,we isolated four point mutations in dronc that recessively suppress the eye ablation phenotype caused by eye-specific overexpression of hid. Homozygous mutant dronc animals die during pupal stages; however, at a low frequency we obtained homozygous adult escapers. These escapers have additional cells in the eye and wings that are less transparent and slightly curved down. We determined that this is due to lack of apoptosis. Our analyses of dronc mutant embryos suggest that dronc is essential for most apoptotic cell death during Drosophila development, but they also imply the existence of a dronc-independent cell death pathway. We also constructed double mutant flies for dronc and the apoptosis inhibitor diap1. dronc mutants can rescue the ovarian degeneration phenotype caused by diap1 mutations, confirming that dronc acts genetically downstream of diap1.
Publisher
The Company of Biologists
Subject
Developmental Biology,Molecular Biology
Reference73 articles.
1. Abbott, M. K. and Lengyel, J. A. (1991). Embryonic head involution and rotation of male terminalia require the Drosophila locus head involution defective. Genetics129,783-789.
2. Abrams, J. M., White, K., Fessler, L. I. and Steller, H.(1993). Programmed cell death during Drosophilaembryogenesis. Development117, 29-43.
3. Baehrecke, E. H. (2002). How death shapes life during development. Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol.3, 779-787.
4. Bergmann, A., Agapite, J., McCall, K. A. and Steller, H.(1998). The Drosophila gene hid is a direct molecular target of Ras-dependent survival signaling. Cell95,331-341.
5. Bergmann, A., Yang, A. Y. and Srivastava, M.(2003). Regulators of IAP function: coming to grips with the grim reaper. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol.15,717-724.
Cited by
162 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献