Abstract
The Drosophila larval central nervous system comprises the central brain, ventral nerve cord and optic lobe. In these regions, neuroblasts (NBs) divide asymmetrically to self-renew and generate differentiated neurons or glia. To date, mechanisms of preventing neuron dedifferentiation are still unclear, especially in the optic lobe. Here, we show that the zinc-finger transcription factor Nerfin-1 is expressed in early-stage medulla neurons and is essential for maintaining their differentiation. Loss of Nerfin-1 activates Notch signaling, which promotes neuron-to-NB reversion. Repressing Notch signaling largely rescues dedifferentiation in nerfin-1 mutant clones. Thus, we conclude that Nerfin-1 represses Notch activity in medulla neurons and prevents them from dedifferentiation.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
J.X. and L.Z. conceived and designed the experiments; J.X., X.H., Y.L., Y.J. and J.X. performed the experiments; J.X., X.H. and L.Z. analyzed the data; L.G., W.W. and Y.Z. contributed regents/materials; J.X., M.-X.Y., M.H., Y.Y. and L.Z. wrote and edited the paper.
Funding
This research is supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB19000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31625017, 31530043 and 31371462), the ‘Cross and cooperation in science and technology innovation team’ project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at http://dev.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/dev.141341.supplemental
- Received June 21, 2016.
- Accepted February 17, 2017.
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