Wingless _ Wnt1蛋白在赤拟谷盗发育中的作用研究.doc

  Effects of Wingless / Wnt1 on the Development of Tribolium castaneum# Zhuoyu Li1, Yanan Peng1, Bin Li2, Chengjun Li2* 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 (1. The Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Institute of Biotechnology, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China; 2. Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Biodiversity and Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China) Abstract: Known as highly conserved during evolution, the Wnt signaling pathway plays a vital role in regulating animal embryonic axis, embryonic differentiation, and deciding cell polarity and maintaining adult dynamic equilibrium. Mutations or deregulations of its components can cause the occurrence of carcinoma. We studied the role of Wingless/Wnt1 during larva-adult development of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, with dsRNA-mediated Wingless(Wg)/Wnt1 gene being knocked down. The treated late larvae metamorphosed into pupae with drastically increased wing interval and decreased wing width (P<0.01). The pursuant pupa-adult eclosion was also severely affected and most of pupae died during this period. The qPCR result showed that the mRNA level of Cadherin-like and Smoothened (Smo) genes were up-regulated greatly, and that of armadillo-2 was slightly higher , after Wingless/Wnt1 gene was knocked down. We drew the conclusion that Wnt-1 signaling pathway is closely related to the proper wing development and adult metamorphosis of Tribolium. In addition, the elevated expression of Cadherin-like and Armadillo-2 may be accountable for the reduced wing width and enlarged wing interval caused by wg gene silencing, because those alterations can either enhance cell adhesion or change cell morphology. Importantly, the up-regulation of smo gene indicates that Hedgehog signaling pathway may be affected by the RNAi of wg and involved in the abnormal or lethal phenotypes observed in our experiment. Key words: Biochemistry a