candidate gene screen in the red flour beetle tribolium reveals six3 as ancient regulator of anterior median head and central complex development候选基因的屏幕在红色面粉甲虫种有害揭示six3古老的前正中头部和中央监管机构复杂的发展.pdfVIP

Candidate Gene Screen in the Red Flour Beetle Tribolium Reveals Six3 as Ancient Regulator of Anterior Median Head and Central Complex Development 1,2. 1. 3 1 Nico Posnien , Nikolaus Dieter Bernhard Koniszewski , Hendrikje Jeannette Hein , Gregor Bucher * ¨ ¨ ¨ 1 Center for Molecular Physiology of the Brain (CMPB), Gottingen Center of Molecular Biology, Caspari-Haus, Georg-August-University Gottingen, Gottingen, Germany, ¨ 2 School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom, 3 MPI fur Molekulare Genetik, Berlin, Germany Abstract Several highly conserved genes play a role in anterior neural plate patterning of vertebrates and in head and brain patterning of insects. However, head involution in Drosophila has impeded a systematic identification of genes required for insect head formation. Therefore, we use the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum in order to comprehensively test the function of orthologs of vertebrate neural plate patterning genes for a function in insect head development. RNAi analysis reveals that most of these genes are indeed required for insect head capsule patterning, and we also identified several genes that had not been implicated in this process before. Furthermore, we show that Tc-six3/optix acts upstream of Tc- wingless, Tc-orthodenticle1, and Tc-eyeless to control anterior median development. Finally, we demonstrate that Tc-six3/ optix is the first gene known to be req