Neuron
Volume 43, Issue 6, 16 September 2004, Pages 809-822
Journal home page for Neuron

Article
Development of Morphological Diversity of Dendrites in Drosophila by the BTB-Zinc Finger Protein Abrupt

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.08.016Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Abstract

Morphological diversity of dendrites contributes to specialized functions of individual neurons. In the present study, we examined the molecular basis that generates distinct morphological classes of Drosophila dendritic arborization (da) neurons. da neurons are classified into classes I to IV in order of increasing territory size and/or branching complexity. We found that Abrupt (Ab), a BTB-zinc finger protein, is expressed selectively in class I cells. Misexpression of ab in neurons of other classes directed them to take the appearance of cells with smaller and/or less elaborated arbors. Loss of ab functions in class I neurons resulted in malformation of their typical comb-like arbor patterns and generation of supernumerary branch terminals. Together with the results of monitoring dendritic dynamics of ab-misexpressing cells or ab mutant ones, all of the data suggested that Ab endows characteristics of dendritic morphogenesis of the class I neurons.

Cited by (0)

5

Present address: Department of Genetics, North Carolina State University, North Carolina 27695.

6

Present address: Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.