Journal article
Tow (Target of Wingless), a novel repressor of the Hedgehog pathway in Drosophila
KL Ayers, R Rodriguez, A Gallet, L Ruel, P Thérond
Developmental Biology | ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE | Published : 2009
Abstract
Hedgehog (Hh) signalling plays a crucial role in the development and patterning of many tissues in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Aberrations in this pathway lead to severe developmental defects and cancer. Hh signal transduction in receiving cells is a well studied phenomenon; however questions still remain concerning the mechanism of repression of the pathway activator Smoothened (Smo) in the absence of Hh. Here we describe a novel repressor of the Hh pathway, Target of Wingless (Tow). Tow represents the Drosophila homolog of a conserved uncharacterised protein family. We show that Tow acts in Hh receiving cells, where its overexpression represses all levels of Hh signalling, and that..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge Chung S, for sharing unpublished results. We thank R. UEDA from the National Institute of Genetics for providing RNAi transgenics, as well as Ingham P., Eaton S., Lecuit T., Karess R., Kiehart D., Schweissguth F., Guerrero L, for providing flies and reagents. We are indebted to the Plateforme PRISM - UMR6543 CNRS/UNSA especially Dr Schaub for help with image analysis. KA is supported by a Marie Curie fellowship and by an Association pour le Research Sur le Cancer (ARC) fellowship, R.R was supported by an ARC fellowship and P.P.T is supported by La Ligue Contre le Cancer'equipe labelisee 2008'. The authors are grateful to R. Aiken for critically reviewing the manuscript.