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. 2007 Dec 18;104(51):20362-7.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0706722105. Epub 2007 Dec 12.

Fat and expanded act in parallel to regulate growth through warts

Affiliations

Fat and expanded act in parallel to regulate growth through warts

Yongqiang Feng et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The conserved Drosophila tumor suppressors Fat and Expanded have both recently been implicated in regulating the activity of the Warts tumor suppressor. However, there has been disagreement as to the nature of the links among Fat, Expanded, and Warts and the significance of these links to growth control. We report here that mutations in either expanded or fat can be rescued to viability simply by overexpressing Warts, indicating that their essential function is their influence on Warts rather than reported effects on endocytosis or other pathways. These rescue experiments also separate the transcriptional from the planar cell polarity branches of Fat signaling and reveal that Expanded does not directly affect polarity. We also investigate the relationship between expanded and fat and show, contrary to prior reports, that they have additive effects on imaginal disk growth and development. Although mutation of fat can cause partial loss of Expanded protein from the membrane, mutation of fat promotes growth even when Expanded is overexpressed and accumulates at its normal subapical location. These observations argue against recent proposals that Fat acts simply as a receptor for the Hippo signaling pathway and instead support the proposal that Fat and Expanded can act in parallel to regulate Warts through distinct mechanisms.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Rescue of fat and ex by Wts overexpression. Null mutations in fat or ex are lethal but can be rescued to viability by overexpression of Wts. (A–C) Adult flies of wild type (A), fat8 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/ftG-rv; tub-Gal4 (B), and exe1 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/exe1; tub-Gal4 (C). (D–G) Adult wings from wild type (D), UAS-Myc:Wts.2/tub-Gal4 (E), fat8 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/ftG-rv; tub-Gal4 (F), and exe1 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/exe1; tub-Gal4 (G). The arrows point to extra vein material. (H–J) Portion of abdomens from wild type (H), fat8 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/ftG-rv; tub-Gal4 (I), and exe1 UAS-Myc:Wts.2/exe1; tub-Gal4 (J). In H and J all hairs and bristles point posteriorly (down); in I bristles and hairs are misoriented and swirling patterns of hairs are visible.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
fat and ex have additive effects on growth. (A and B) The average sizes (in arbitrary units) of GFP-expressing clones of the indicated genotypes were measured. Error bars show SEM. For wild-type (+), n (number of clones measured) = 166 for wings and 95 for eyes; for exe1 n = 132 for wings and 154 for eyes; for ft8 n = 114 for wings and 152 for eyes; for ftG-rv n = 133 for wings and 133 for eyes; for exe1 ft8 n = 46 for wings and 70 for eyes; for exe1 ftG-rv n = 184 for wings and 169 for eyes. The increased size of ex fat double mutant clones compared with single mutant clones is significant in all cases (P < 0.01). (C–E) Representative wing imaginal discs of the indicated genotypes are shown from larvae dissected 7 days after egg laying. (F–I) Eye imaginal discs of the indicated genotypes from wandering third-instar larvae stained for ELAV. Arrows point to posterior regions of the eye disk that lack ELAV staining in mutants. All discs are shown at the same magnification.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Influence of Fat signaling on Ex. Shown are wing imaginal discs stained for Ex (red) and E-cadherin (green). (A and C) Projections through horizontal sections. (B and D) Vertical sections. A′–D′ and A″–D″ show individual channels of the image. Mutant clones (outlined by dashes) were marked by the absence of GFP (blue). GFP staining does not overlap Ex and E-cadherin and is shown from more basal focal planes in the horizontal images. Endogenous Ex staining is lower along the dorsal–ventral boundary (D-V, yellow arrows) and anterior–posterior boundary (A-P, green arrows). (A and B) fat8 mutant clones. Ex staining is decreased. E-cadherin staining sometimes appears increased (20). (C and D) dGC13 fat8 mutant clones. No consistent difference in Ex staining between wild-type and mutant tissue was observed.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Fat signals even when Ex is overexpressed. (A and B) Portions of wing imaginal discs stained for Ex (red) and E-cadherin (green). A shows horizontal sections, and B shows vertical sections. MARCM clones mutant for fat8 and overexpressing Ex were marked by the presence of GFP (blue). Ex staining was captured with intensity settings different from those in Fig. 3 to illustrate the difference in expression levels between endogenous Ex (barely visible) and ectopic Ex (bright red); the localization of ectopic Ex appears normal. (C and D) The average sizes of GFP-expressing clones of the indicated genotypes. Error bars show SEM. For wild-type, n = 166 for wings and 95 for eyes; for ft8 n = 114 for wings and 152 for eyes; for UAS-ex n = 61 for wings and 82 for eyes; for ft8 UAS-ex n = 68 for wings and 102 for eyes. (E and F) Wing imaginal discs stained for WG (magenta) and containing clones (arrows, marked by GFP, green) mutant for fat8 (E) or mutant for fat8 and overexpressing Ex (F).

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