Previous Article |
Table of Contents
| Next Article 
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
The origin of islet-like cells in Drosophila identifies parallels to the vertebrate endocrine axis
,¶
*Wistar Institute, Room 358, 3601 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; Departments of Neuroscience and Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104; and Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, U Station B 351634, Nashville, TN 37235-1634
Edited by Michael S. Levine, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and approved October 23, 2007 (received for review August 8, 2007)
Single-cell resolution lineage information is a critical key to understanding how the states of gene regulatory networks respond to cell interactions and thereby establish distinct cell fates. Here, we identify a single pair of neural stem cells (neuroblasts) as progenitors of the brain insulin-producing neurosecretory cells of Drosophila, which are homologous to islet β cells. Likewise, we identify a second pair of neuroblasts as progenitors of the neurosecretory Corpora cardiaca cells, which are homologous to the glucagon-secreting islet 
cells. We find that both progenitors originate as neighboring cells from anterior neuroectoderm, which expresses genes orthologous to those expressed in the vertebrate adenohypophyseal placode, the source of endocrine anterior pituitary and neurosecretory hypothalamic cells [Whitlock KE (2005) Trends Endocrinol Metab 16:145–151]. This ontogenic-molecular concordance suggests that a rudimentary brain endocrine axis was present in the common ancestor of humans and flies, where it orchestrated the islet-like endocrine functions of insulin and glucagon biology.
glucagon | insulin | neuroblast | pituitary | hypothalamus
Author contributions: S.W., N.T., and E.J.R. designed research; S.W., N.T., D.L.C., and E.J.R. performed research; S.W., N.T., D.L.C., and E.J.R. analyzed data; and E.J.R. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
¶To whom correspondence should be sent at present address: Institute for Regeneration Medicine, University of California, 513 Parnassus Avenue, HSW 1201, Campus Box 0525, San Francisco, CA 94143. E-mail: eric.rulifson{at}ucsf.edu
© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg What's this?
