Journal article
Notch signaling during development requires the function of awd, the Drosophila homolog of human metastasis suppressor gene Nm23
M Ignesti, M Barraco, G Nallamothu, JA Woolworth, S Duchi, G Gargiulo, V Cavaliere, T Hsu
BMC Biology | BMC | Published : 2014
Abstract
Background: The Drosophila abnormal wing discs (awd) belongs to a highly conserved family of genes implicated in metastasis suppression, metabolic homeostasis and epithelial morphogenesis. The cellular function of the mammalian members of this family, the Nm23 proteins, has not yet been clearly defined. Previous awd genetic analyses unraveled its endocytic role that is required for proper internalization of receptors controlling different signaling pathways. In this study, we analyzed the role of Awd in controlling Notch signaling during development.Results: To study the awd gene function we used genetic mosaic approaches to obtain cells homozygous for a loss of function allele. In awd mutan..
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Awarded by National Institutes of Health
Funding Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to the memory of our wonderful colleague Dr. Franco Graziani, a devoted scientist and great motivating mentor. We thank S. Bray, M. Fortini, M. Blanco, T. Vaccari, D. Bilder, A. Nakamura and B. Lemaitre for generous gifts of fly stocks and antibodies. We also thank the Bloomington Stock Center for providing us with fly stocks and the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank at the University of Iowa for monoclonal antibodies. We are particularly grateful to Carlo Taddei for his encouragements and insightful discussions throughout the course of this work. We thank P. Romani for helpful suggestions on preparing the manuscript. We also thank Marco Privitera for his graphic work. The work was supported by a research grant from the Association for International Cancer Research (AICR grant ref. 11-0738) to V.C., a grant from University of Bologna (RFO 2009) to G.G. and V.C., and a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R01CA109860) to T.H.