Establishment of Cell Polarity in Fucoid Zygotes

摘要Kropf提案#0414089在卵子和胚胎中建立极性对从植物到动物的所有有机体的发育都是基本的。这项资助的研究将调查受精卵建立发育极性的机制，重点是生长轴的形成和细胞分裂的排列。在待研究的生物体Silvetia compressa中，受精后立即建立一个极轴，该轴提供空间信息，使第一个细胞分裂精确地垂直于生长轴。细胞骨架是细胞的物理框架，已知在细胞极化中发挥核心作用，这项工作将结合细胞、分子和生物化学方法来研究卵子发育中的细胞骨架。此外，旨在保存细胞结构的改进技术将用于可视化早期发育的所有阶段的细胞内容。这项研究有望为驱动细胞极化的细胞骨架重排提供更深层次的见解，并确定调节这些重排的蛋白质。我们的目标是对受精卵如何重组以获得极性有一个完整的了解。由于Silvetia只与在发育背景下研究过细胞极性的其他生物有较远的亲缘关系，因此结果也将提供关于发育机制进化的有价值的信息。细胞极性的某些方面预计将与远亲生物共享，因此是古老的，而其他方面将是西尔维梯独有的，因此是最近进化的。这笔资金还将用于为本科生、女性和少数族裔提供培训。

ABSTRACT Kropf Proposal # 0414089Establishing polarity in eggs and embryos is fundamental to the development of all organisms, from plants to animals. The funded research will investigate mechanisms by which fertilized eggs establish developmental polarity, focusing on formation of a growth axis and alignment of cell division. In Silvetia compressa, the organism to be studied, a polar growth axis is established immediately after fertilization, and this axis provides spatial information to align the first cell division precisely perpendicular to the growth axis. The cytoskeleton, the physical framework of a cell, is known to play a central role in cell polarization and the work will combine cellular, molecular and biochemical approaches to study the cytoskeleton in developing eggs. In addition, improved techniques aimed at preserving cellular structure will be used to visualize cellular contents at all stages of early development. The research is expected to provide deeper insights into rearrangements of the cytoskeleton that drive cell polarization, and to identify proteins that regulate these rearrangements. The goal is to obtain an integrated understanding of how a fertilized egg reorganizes itself to acquire polarity. Since Silvetia is only distantly related to other organisms in which cell polarity has been studied in a developmental context, the results will also provide valuable information concerning the evolution of developmental mechanisms. Some aspects of cellular polarity are expected to be shared with distantly related organisms and therefore ancient, while other aspects will be unique to Silvetia and therefore more recently evolved. The funds will also be used to provide training for undergraduates, women and minorities.