A developmental pathway for epithelial-to-motoneuron transformation in C. elegans

Motoneurons and motoneuron-like pancreatic beta cells arise from radial glia and ductal cells, both tube-lining progenitors that share molecular regulators. To uncover programs underlying motoneuron formation, we studied a similar, cell-division-independent transformation of the C. elegans tube-lining Y cell into the PDA motoneuron. We find that lin-12/Notch acts through ngn-1/Ngn and its regulator hlh-16/Olig to control transformation timing. lin-12 loss blocks transformation, while lin-12(gf) promotes precocious PDA formation. Early basal expression of both ngn-1/Ngn and hlh-16/Olig depends on sem-4/Sall and egl-5/Hox. Later, coincident with Y-cell morphological changes, ngn-1/Ngn expression is upregulated in a sem-4/Sall and egl-5/Hox-dependent but hlh-16/Olig-independent manner. Subsequently, Y-cell retrograde extension forms an anchored process priming PDA axon extension. Extension requires ngn-1-dependent expression of the cytoskeleton organizers UNC-119, UNC-44/ANK, and UNC-33/CRMP, which also, unexpectedly, activate PDA terminal-gene expression. Our findings reveal key cell-division-independent regulatory events leading to motoneuron generation, suggesting a conserved pathway for epithelial-to-motoneuron/motoneuron-like differentiation.

• Publication year

  2022

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2022-05-28

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/2022.05.27.493712PMID 36170838PMCID 9579992
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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