A CDK1 phosphorylation site on Drosophila PAR-3 regulates neuroblast polarisation and sensory organ formation

Abstract

The generation of distinct cell fates during development depends on asymmetric cell division of progenitor cells. In the central and peripheral nervous system of Drosophila, progenitor cells respectively called neuroblasts or sensory organ precursors use PAR polarity during mitosis to control cell fate determination in their daughter cells. How polarity and the cell cycle are coupled, and how the cell cycle machinery regulates PAR protein function and cell fate determination is poorly understood. Here, we generate an analog sensitive allele of CDK1 and reveal that its partial inhibition weakens but does not abolish apical polarity in embryonic and larval neuroblasts and leads to defects in polarisation of fate determinants. We describe a novel in vivo phosphorylation of Bazooka, the Drosophila homolog of PAR-3, on Serine180, a consensus CDK phosphorylation site. In some tissular contexts, phosphorylation of Serine180 occurs in asymmetrically dividing cells but not in their symmetrically dividing neighbours. In neuroblasts, Serine180 phosphomutants disrupt the timing of basal polarisation. Serine180 phosphomutants also affect the specification and binary cell fate determination of sensory organ precursors as well as Baz localisation during their asymmetric cell divisions. Finally, we show that CDK1 phosphorylates Serine-S180 and an equivalent Serine on human PAR-3 in vitro.

Data availability

The raw western blot data shown in figure 7 are available in figure 7 supplement.The mass spectrometry proteomics data presented in figure 7 have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD051560.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Nicolas Loyer

    Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5010-2564
  2. Elizabeth KJ Hogg

    MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2509-3202
  3. Hayley G Shaw

    Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Anna Pasztor

    Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0009-0001-4659-9691
  5. David H Murray

    Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2582-8552
  6. Greg M Findlay

    MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7222-4965
  7. Jens Januschke

    Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    j.januschke@dundee.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8985-2717

Funding

Wellcome Trust (100031/Z/12/A)

  • Jens Januschke

Wellcome Trust (211193/Z/18/Z)

  • David H Murray

Wellcome Trust (211209/Z/18/7)

  • Greg M Findlay

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/V001353/1)

  • Jens Januschke

Royal Society (RGS/R2/180284)

  • David H Murray

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/T017546/1)

  • Jens Januschke

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2024, Loyer et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 525
    views
  • 113
    downloads
  • 0
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Nicolas Loyer
  2. Elizabeth KJ Hogg
  3. Hayley G Shaw
  4. Anna Pasztor
  5. David H Murray
  6. Greg M Findlay
  7. Jens Januschke
(2024)
A CDK1 phosphorylation site on Drosophila PAR-3 regulates neuroblast polarisation and sensory organ formation
eLife 13:e97902.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.97902

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.97902

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    Weihong Xiong, Maozhen Qin, Haining Zhong
    Short Report

    Protein kinase A (PKA) plays essential roles in diverse cellular functions. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of endogenous PKA upon activation remain debated. The classical model predicts that PKA catalytic subunits dissociate from regulatory subunits in the presence of cAMP, whereas a second model proposes that catalytic subunits remain associated with regulatory subunits following physiological activation. Here, we report that different PKA subtypes, as defined by the regulatory subunit, exhibit distinct subcellular localization at rest in CA1 neurons of cultured hippocampal slices. Nevertheless, when all tested PKA subtypes are activated by norepinephrine, presumably via the β-adrenergic receptor, catalytic subunits translocate to dendritic spines but regulatory subunits remain unmoved. These differential spatial dynamics between the subunits indicate that at least a significant fraction of PKA dissociates. Furthermore, PKA-dependent regulation of synaptic plasticity and transmission can be supported only by wildtype, dissociable PKA, but not by inseparable PKA. These results indicate that endogenous PKA regulatory and catalytic subunits dissociate to achieve PKA function in neurons.

    1. Cell Biology
    Dandan Wu, Chi Yang ... Zhenhong Zhuang
    Research Article

    The epigenetic reader SntB was identified as an important transcriptional regulator of growth, development, and secondary metabolite synthesis in Aspergillus flavus. However, the underlying molecular mechanism is still unclear. In this study, by gene deletion and complementation, we found SntB is essential for mycelia growth, conidial production, sclerotia formation, aflatoxin synthesis, and host colonization. Chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) and RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis revealed that SntB played key roles in oxidative stress response of A. flavus, influencing related gene activity, especially catC encoding catalase. SntB regulated the expression activity of catC with or without oxidative stress, and was related to the expression level of the secretory lipase (G4B84_008359). The deletion of catC showed that CatC participated in the regulation of fungal morphogenesis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) level, and aflatoxin production, and that CatC significantly regulated fungal sensitive reaction and AFB1 yield under oxidative stress. Our study revealed the potential machinery that SntB regulated fungal morphogenesis, mycotoxin anabolism, and fungal virulence through the axle of from H3K36me3 modification to fungal virulence and mycotoxin biosynthesis. The results of this study shed light into the SntB-mediated transcript regulation pathways of fungal mycotoxin anabolism and virulence, which provided potential strategy to control the contamination of A. flavus and its aflatoxins.