JCB logo
Get More Out of Microscopy - Agilent iMIC 2000
  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents
Published online August 13, 2007
doi:10.1083/jcb.200704049
The Journal of Cell Biology, Vol. 178, No. 4, 661-673
The Rockefeller University Press, 0021-9525 $30.00
© 2007 Margalit et al.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow PDF (Full Text)
Right arrow PPT slides of all figures
Right arrow Supplemental Material Index
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new content in the JCB
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Margalit, A.
Right arrow Articles by Gruenbaum, Y.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Margalit, A.
Right arrow Articles by Gruenbaum, Y.
Right arrowPubmed/NCBI databases
*Gene*GEO Profiles
*HomoloGene*UniGene
Related Collections
Right arrowRelated Article
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?

Article

 Barrier to autointegration factor blocks premature cell fusion and maintains adult muscle integrity in C. elegans

Ayelet Margalit1, Esther Neufeld1, Naomi Feinstein1, Katherine L. Wilson2, Benjamin Podbilewicz3, and Yosef Gruenbaum1

1 Department of Genetics, The Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
2 Department of Cell Biology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205
3 Department of Biology, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

Correspondence to Yosef Gruenbaum: gru{at}vms.huji.ac.il

Barrier to autointegration factor (BAF) binds double-stranded DNA, selected histones, transcription regulators, lamins, and LAP2–emerin–MAN1 (LEM) domain proteins. During early Caenorhabditis elegans embryogenesis, BAF-1 is required to organize chromatin, capture segregated chromosomes within the nascent nuclear envelope, and assemble lamin and LEM domain proteins in reforming nuclei. In this study, we used C. elegans with a homozygous deletion of the baf-1 gene, which survives embryogenesis and larval stages, to report that BAF-1 regulates maturation and survival of the germline, cell migration, vulva formation, and the timing of seam cell fusion. In the seam cells, BAF-1 represses the expression of the EFF-1 fusogen protein, but fusion still occurs in C. elegans lacking both baf-1 and eff-1. This suggests the existence of an eff-1–independent mechanism for cell fusion. BAF-1 is also required to maintain the integrity of specific body wall muscles in adult animals, directly implicating BAF in the mechanism of human muscular dystrophies (laminopathies) caused by mutations in the BAF-binding proteins emerin and lamin A.

Abbreviations list: BAF, barrier to autointegration factor; ChIP, chromatin immunoprecipitation; DIC, differential interference contrast; DTC, distal tip cell; LEM, LAP2–emerin–MAN1; VPC, vulval precursor cell.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Related Article

Multifunctional BAF-1
Ruth Williams
J. Cell Biol. 2007 178: 542. [Full Text] [PDF]



This article has been cited by other articles:



  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents