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Published December 1, 1999 | Published
Journal Article Open

The lin-11 LIM domain transcription factor is necessary for morphogenesis of C. elegans uterine cells

Abstract

The Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodite egg-laying system comprises several tissues, including the uterus and vulva. lin-11 encodes a LIM domain transcription factor needed for certain vulval precursor cells to divide asymmetrically. Based on lin-11 expression studies and the lin-11 mutant phenotype, we find that lin-11 is also required for C. elegans uterine morphogenesis. Specifically, lin-11 is expressed in the ventral uterine intermediate precursor (pi) cells and their progeny (the utse and uv1 cells), which connect the uterus to the vulva. Like (pi) cell induction, the uterine lin-11 expression responds to the uterine anchor cell and the lin-12-encoded receptor. In wild type animals, the utse, which forms the planar process at the uterine-vulval interface, fuses with the anchor cell. We found that, in lin-11 mutants, utse differentiation was abnormal, the utse failed to fuse with the anchor cell and a functional uterine-vulval connection was not made. These findings indicate that lin-11 is essential for uterine-vulval morphogenesis.

Additional Information

Copyright © 1999 by Company of Biologists. Accepted 10 September; published on WWW 9 November 1999. This work was supported by NIH grant GM24663 to H.R.H. and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. H.R.H. and P.W.S. are Investigators and A.P.N. was an Associate of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. We are grateful to Maureen Barr and Marie-Anne Felix for their comments concerning the manuscript. We thank Jonathan Pettitt for strains NL1000 and NL1008, Wendy Hanna-Rose and Min Han for the integrated cog-2::GFP transcriptional fusion kuIs28, and Nese Cinar for constructing the strain containing kuIs28 in a lin-11(n389) mutant background. The inability of lin-11 mutant animals without 2° cells to lay eggs was first observed by Jim Thomas. lin-11(sy251) was isolated by Bino Palmer and P.W.S.; lin-11(ty6) was isolated by N. Cinar and A.P.N.

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August 22, 2023
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