| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 1992: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1991: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The Drosophila central nervous system comprises an enormous diversity of neurons that are originated from neuronal stem cells, neuroblasts. They generate a specific series of ganglion mother cells, each of which is once cleaved into a pair of neurons. Neuronal identity seems to be determined by neuroblasts from which, and by lineages through which neurons are born. While much is not known about the molecular process for individual neurons to correctly acquire their identity, it has been shown that cell fate determination in the developing central nervous system involves segmentation genes that are known to control the establishment of the segmental structure in early embryogenesis.
We have screened for mutations in genes controlling neurogenesis by the enhancer trap method, and identified the prospero (pros) gene that is required for neurogenesis. Loss of pros function causes lethal defects in the neural morphology, and abnormal expression patterns of segmentation genes, fushitarazu (ftz), even-skipped (eve) and engrailed (en) in the central nervous system, resulting in wrong path finding of axons in some identified neurons. To understand how pros functions, we have isolated the pros gene. pros encodes a nuclear protein containing a homeodomain-like sequence. In neuronal lineages of the central nervous system, pros protein is specifically detected in ganglion mother cells, although their parental neuroblasts have begun expressing a significant level of pros transcripts, suggesting a post-transcriptional control of pros expression. Our results provoke that in neuronal cell differentiation ganglion mother cells might play a pivotal role associating with the pros function.
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