Key elements of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor pathway in Volvox carteri

The green alga Volvox carteri is one of the simplest multicellular organisms. It consists of only two cell types, somatic and reproductive cells, making it a suitable model system for studying cell division, multicellularity, and cellular differentiation. Each of the ~2000-4000 cells of an adult, asexual organism arises through a sequence of symmetric and asymmetric cleavage divisions from a single, asexual reproductive cell. As in ontogenetic development of higher organisms, the fate of a Volvox blastomere (i.e., whether it undergoes division or differentiation) is determined by a complex balance of regulators. Retinoblastoma-related proteins (RBRs) seem to act as key regulators and hubs in cell cycle control and, therefore, have been investigated in detail in higher organisms. Recently, the identification and characterization of a gender-specific RBR in Volvox, RBR1, revealed a role for the retinoblastoma protein family in sexual development. RBRs are elements of a conserved signal-transduction pathway called the retinoblastoma (RB) tumor suppressor pathway. In addition to RBR1, other key components of this pathway are present in Volvox, demonstrating that the RB signal-transduction pathway is utilized by these simple green algae.

• Publication year

  2009

• Venue

  Communicative & Integrative Biology

• Publication date

  2009-09-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.4161/cib.2.5.8761PMID 19907698PMCID PMC2775231
• 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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