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First published online August 18, 2003
doi: 10.1242/10.1242/dev.00670

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Modulation of EGF receptor-mediated vulva development by the heterotrimeric G-protein Gq and excitable cells in C. elegans

Nadeem Moghal^1,*,, L. Rene Garcia^2,*,, Liakot A. Khan^3,, Kouichi Iwasaki³ and Paul W. Sternberg¹

¹ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
² Department of Biology, Texas A&M University, 3258 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA
³ Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, Neuroscience Research Institute AIST, Tsukuba, 305-8566, Japan

View larger version (114K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Expression patterns of the regulatory elements contained in the aex-3 and myo-3 transgenic constructs. Left-hand images are Nomarski, and right-hand images are fluorescence. Scale bars: 20 µm. (A,B,G,H) Body-wall muscle. (C,D,I,J) Ventral cord neurons. (E,F,K,L) Vulval precursor cells. (A-F) Neuronal-specific expression of yfp from the aex-3 promoter in the presence of the last intron from egl-30. Animal is an early L3 stage hermaphrodite containing the pha-1(e2123ts) mutation, and rescued by the extrachromosomal array syEx570 [pha-1, aex-3::yfp::egl-30]. (B,F) Background fluorescence is from neuronally expressed YFP in other focal planes. (G-L) Muscle-specific expression of the egl-19 genomic coding region fused to gfp from the myo-3 promoter. Animal is an early L3 stage hermaphrodite containing the egl-19(n582) mutation and the extrachromosomal array syEx476 [myo-3::egl-19::gfp]. (J,L) Background fluorescence is from body-wall muscle-expressing GFP in other focal planes. AC, anchor cell.

View larger version (102K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Expression pattern of the unc-18 promoter. Left-hand images are Nomarski, and right-hand images are fluorescence. Scale bars: 20 µm. Animals are pha-1(e2123ts) hermaphrodites at the early L3 stage, rescued by the extrachromosomal array syEx594 [pha-1, unc-18::yfp::egl-30]. (A,B) Head. (C,D) Tail. (E,F) Ventral cord. (G,H) Vulval precursor cells. (I,J) Body-wall muscle. Background fluorescence in H and J is from neuronal expression of the reporter. AC, anchor cell.

View larger version (146K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Growth in a liquid environment promotes vulval induction. Scale bars: 20 µm. Animals are L4 stage hermaphrodites. (A) A wild-type animal displaying normal vulval induction that developed on standard NG plates. (B) A let-23(sy1) mutant animal displaying a vulvaless phenotype that developed on standard NG plates. (C) A let-23(sy1) mutant animal displaying normal vulval induction that developed in a liquid M9 environment.

View larger version (28K): [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Depiction of vulval induction in the context of the whole animal. (A) A schematic transverse section through a developing hermaphrodite. The dorsal side of the worm is up. Dorsal and ventral nerve cord, blue circles labeled N; body-wall muscles in the four lateral quadrants, red cells labeled Mu; gonadal tissue, inverted U-shaped tissue; anchor cell, green circle labeled AC. Representative vulval precursor cell (grey cell labeled VPC). (B) One model for EGL-30 modulation of LET-23-mediated vulva development. Neurons (blue, N) are directly stimulated by environmental conditions and transduce a signal to muscle (red, Mu) via EGL-30, and possibly the UNC-13 and UNC-64 synaptic transmission proteins. Excitation of muscle by neuronally expressed (and possibly also by muscle-expressed) EGL-30 leads to activation of downstream components that include EGL-19 voltage-gated calcium channels. The muscle cells provide a modulatory signal that may upregulate BAR-1 activity in P6.p (grey cell, VPC) to cooperate with LIN-3 from the anchor cell (green, AC) to facilitate vulval induction. Hyp, hypodermis; Int, intestine.