Squid Pax-6 and eye development
- Stanislav I. Tomarev*,†,
- Patrick Callaerts‡,
- Lidia Kos§,
- Rina Zinovieva¶,
- Georg Halder‡,
- Walter Gehring‡, and
- Joram Piatigorsky*
- *Laboratory of Molecular and Developmental Biology, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-2730; ‡Department of Cell Biology, Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland, Klingelbergstrasse 70, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland; and §Laboratory of Genetic Disease Research, National Center for Human Genome Research, Bethesda, MD 20892-2730
Abstract
Pax-6 in vertebrates and its homolog eyeless in Drosophila are known to be essential for eye development. Here we investigate the role of Pax-6 in eye development in another major systematic group, molluscs. We demonstrate that alternatively spliced RNAs derived from a single Pax-6 gene in the squid (Loligo opalescens) are expressed in the embryonic eye, olfactory organ, brain, and arms. Despite significant sequence differences between squid Pax-6 and Drosophila eyeless in the region outside the paired- and homeodomains, squid Pax-6 is able to induce the formation of ectopic eyes in Drosophila. Our results support the idea that Pax-6 related genes are necessary for eye and olfactory system formation throughout the animal kingdom.
Footnotes
-
↵ ¶ Present address: N. K. Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117808, Moscow, Russia.
-
↵ † To whom reprint requests should be addressed.
-
Walter Gehring
-
Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been deposited in the GenBank database (accession no. U59830U59830).
- ABBREVIATION:
- RACE,
- rapid amplification of cDNA ends
