Papers

Peer-reviewed
Aug, 2018

Role of MEKK1 in the anterior-posterior patterning during planarian regeneration.

Development, growth & differentiation
  • Kazutaka Hosoda
  • ,
  • Minako Motoishi
  • ,
  • Takuya Kunimoto
  • ,
  • Osamu Nishimura
  • ,
  • Byulnim Hwang
  • ,
  • Sumire Kobayashi
  • ,
  • Shigenobu Yazawa
  • ,
  • Makoto Mochii
  • ,
  • Kiyokazu Agata
  • ,
  • Yoshihiko Umesono

Volume
60
Number
6
First page
341
Last page
353
Language
English
Publishing type
Research paper (scientific journal)
DOI
10.1111/dgd.12541

Planarians have established a unique body pattern along the anterior-posterior (AP) axis, which consists of at least four distinct body regions arranged in an anterior to posterior sequence: head, prepharyngeal, pharyngeal (containing a pharynx), and tail regions, and possess high regenerative ability. How they reconstruct the regional continuity in a head-to-tail sequence after amputation still remains unknown. We use as a model planarian Dugesia japonica head regeneration from tail fragments, which involves dynamic rearrangement of the body regionality of preexisting tail tissues along the AP axis, and show here that RNA interference of the gene D. japonica mek kinase 1 (Djmekk1) caused a significant anterior shift in the position of pharynx regeneration at the expense of the prepharyngeal region, while keeping the head region relatively constant in size, and accordingly led to development of a relatively longer tail region. Our data suggest that DjMEKK1 regulates anterior extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and posterior β-catenin signaling pathways in a positive and negative manner, respectively, to establish a proper balance resulting in the regeneration of planarian's scale-invariant trunk-to-tail patterns across individuals. Furthermore, we demonstrated that DjMEKK1 negatively modulates planarian β-catenin activity via its serine/threonine kinase domain, but not its PHD/RING finger domain, by testing secondary axis formation in Xenopus embryos. The data suggest that Djmekk1 plays an instructive role in the coordination between the establishment of the prepharyngeal region and posteriorizing of pharynx formation by balancing the two opposing morphogenetic signals along the AP axis during planarian regeneration.

Link information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/dgd.12541
PubMed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29900546
ID information
  • DOI : 10.1111/dgd.12541
  • Pubmed ID : 29900546

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