Organogenesis of the C. elegans Vulva and Control of Cell Fusion

How cells fuse

“…During postembryonic (larval) development, additional cells merge with the major embryonic syncytium hyp7 forming the largest worm cell, containing 139 nuclei in the adult hermaphrodite (Podbilewicz and White, 1994; Yochem et al, 1998). Additional multinucleate cells form in the epidermis and during organogenesis of the vulva, uterus, and hymen in the reproductive system (Sharma-Kishore et al, 1999; Kolotuev and Podbilewicz, 2008; Weinstein and Podbilewicz, 2016). In the digestive system, fusions occur in epithelial and myoepithelial cells of the pharynx and in different glands (Shemer et al, 2004).…”

The hallmarks of cell-cell fusion

“…Interestingly, self-fusions have been reported during blood vessel pruning during vertebrate vascular differentiation, although the fusogens implicated in this context remain unknown (Lenard et al, 2015). Misregulation of the EFF-1/AFF-1-based cell fusion machineries by interference of EGF/RAS/MAPK, Notch and Wnt signaling can result in either excessive fusion or fusion failure, causing, for instance, vulvaless or multi-vulva phenotypes, respectively (Dalpe et al, 2005;Escobar-Restrepo and Hajnal, 2014;Koh et al, 2004;Podbilewicz, 2004, 2008;Myers and Greenwald, 2005;Schmid and Hajnal, 2015;Weinstein and Podbilewicz, 2016). In larval epidermal lateral seam cells, actin fibers crosslinked by Spectroplakin (VAB-10A) interact with EFF-1 to increase its apical distribution and assist in reducing the intermembrane distance (Yang et al, 2017).…”