Complex interference in the eye developmental pathway by <i>Drosophila</i> NF‐YA

Yoshioka, Yasuhide; Suyari, Osamu; Yamada, Mikihiro; Ohno, Katsuhito; Hayashi, Yuko; Yamaguchi, Masamitsu

doi:10.1002/dvg.20260

Cited by 20 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…1), which encodes a subunit of NF-Y, an evolutionarily conserved heterotrimeric transcription factor. Although NF-Y function has not been studied extensively in the fly19,20, it has been shown to act as both an activator21 and a repressor22 in other organisms. The targeting of visual-system neurons was assessed in mosaic animals9 to generate large patches of mutant retinal tissue early in development (Fig.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinate control of synaptic-layer specificity and rhodopsins in photoreceptor neurons

Morey¹,

Yee²,

Herman³

et al. 2008

Nature

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How neurons make specific synaptic connections is a central question in neurobiology. The targeting of the Drosophila R7 and R8 photoreceptor axons to different synaptic layers in the brain provides a model with which to explore the genetic programs regulating target specificity. In principle this can be accomplished by cell-type-specific molecules mediating the recognition between synaptic partners 1 . Alternatively, specificity could also be achieved through cell-type-specific repression of particular targeting molecules. Here we show that a key step in the targeting of the R7 neuron is the active repression of the R8 targeting program. Repression is dependent on NF-YC, a subunit of the NF-Y (nuclear factor Y) transcription factor 2 . In the absence of NF-YC, R7 axons terminate in the same layer as R8 axons. Genetic experiments indicate that this is due solely to the derepression of the R8-specific transcription factor Senseless 3 (Sens) late in R7 differentiation. Sens is sufficient to control R8 targeting specificity and we demonstrate that Sens directly binds to an evolutionarily conserved DNA sequence upstream of the start of transcription of an R8-specific cell-surface protein, Capricious (Caps) that regulates R8 target specificity. We show that R7 targeting requires the R7-specific transcription factor Prospero 4,5 (Pros) in parallel to repression of the R8targetingpathway by NF-YC. Previous studies demonstrated that Sens 6,7 and Pros 8 directly regulate the expression of specific rhodopsins in R8 and R7. We propose that the use of the same transcription factors to promote the cell-type-specific expression of sensory receptors and cell-surface proteins regulating synaptic target specificity provides a simple and general mechanism for ensuring that transmission of sensory information is processed by the appropriate specialized neural circuits.The compound eye comprises about 750 simple eyes (ommatidia), each containing a cluster of eight photoreceptor neurons (R1-R8). These neurons form synaptic connections in two regions of the optic lobe, the lamina and the medulla (Fig. 1a). The R1-R6 neurons innervate the lamina; the R7 and R8 neurons form connections in the M6 and M3 medulla layers, respectively. Genetic studies have led to the identification of cell-surface proteins regulating R7 and R8 target specificity [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] (refs 9-14 ), the layer in which wild-type R8 axons terminate, suggesting a close relationship between the genetic programs controlling R7 and R8 target specificity. Here we describe transcriptional regulatory pathways that control the differential targeting specificity of these neurons.In a screen for R7 targeting mutants 10 , we identified a strong loss of function mutation in the NF-YC gene ( Supplementary Fig. 1), which encodes a subunit of NF-Y, an evolutionarily conserved heterotrimeric transcription factor. Although NF-Y function has not been studied extensively in the fly 19,20 , it has been shown to act as both an activator 21 and a repress...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordinate control of synaptic-layer specificity and rhodopsins in photoreceptor neurons

Morey¹,

Yee²,

Herman³

et al. 2008

Nature

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“…The dmp53 null mutant fly line, generated by homologous recombination and homozygous viable (Sogame et al, 2003), was kindly supplied by Dr. M. Abrams. The UAS-dNF-YA line was described earlier (Yoshioka et al, 2007) as well as the transgenic fly line carrying GMR-GAL4 on the X chromosome (Takahashi et al, 1999). All other stocks used in this study were obtained from the Bloomington, Indiana stock center.…”

Section: Fly Strainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to examine dNF-YA ability to bind to the genomic region containing CCAAT boxes of the dmp53 gene, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation assays with Drosophila S2 cells using affinity purified anti-dNF-YA polyclonal antibodies (Yoshioka et al, 2007). It is known that the bsk promoter contains a CCAAT box to which dNF-YA specifically binds (Yoshioka et al, 2008).…”

Section: Dnf-ya Binds To the Genomic Region Containing Ccaat Boxes Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Drosophila model, studies focused on NF-YA have revealed a novel function in regulation of the JNK signal transduction pathway that had not been suggested in mammalian systems (Yoshioka et al, 2008). Moreover, overexpression or knockdown of Drosophila NF-YA (dNF-YA) results in specific phenotypes (Yoshioka et al, 2007(Yoshioka et al, , 2008 providing useful models for studying NF-Y functions in vivo.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…NF-Y is a trimetric transcription factor that consists of three subunits, NF-YA, -B and -C, all three of which are essential for functions of NF-Y and for DNA binding (Sinha et al, 1995;Mantovani, 1999;Yoshioka et al, 2007). NF-Y specifically binds to multiple CCAAT boxes in many promoters of eukaryotic genes (Mantovani, 1999), many with key roles in the G1/S and G2/M transitions (Elkon et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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