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The World of Protozoa, Rotifera, Nematoda and Oligochaeta

Ref ID : 1992

Henry Roehl and Judith Kimble; Control of cell fate in C. elegans by a GLP-1 peptide consisting primarily of ankyrin repeats. Nature 364:632-635, 1993

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The homologous proteins GLP-1 and LIN-12 are required for cell interactions during nematode development. glp-1 and lin-12 are members of a gene family that includes Drosophila Notch and several vertebrate homologues. The members of this family have a single transmembrane domain and a similar arrangement of repeated amino-acid motifs. The mechanism by which proteins in this family function is not understood. One hypothesis is that these proteins are receptors, each with an extracellular domain that binds a ligand and an intracellular domain that influences the activity of downstream cell fate regulators. Here we report that a region of the GLP-1 intracellular domain, consisting primarily of six ankyrin repeats, is sufficient to direct cell fate. The cell fate transformations seen are similar to transformations caused by gain-of-function mutations in either glp-1 or lin-12 and do not rely on endogenous lin-12 or glp-1 activity. We propose that the ankyrin repeat region of GLP-1 is responsible for controlling downstream regulators of cell fate.