BIOLOGICAL OVERVIEW

Myosins are a functionally divergent group of molecular motors that are involved in various non-muscle cell motile activities. Zipper, hence referred to as Myosin II, or non-muscle myosin, is crucial to the viability of the Drosophila embryo throughout its development. The clearest example of nonmuscle-driven shape change is cytokinesis, in which an actin and myosin-rich contractile ring cleaves the cell during mitosis. Null alleles of zipper coding for the non-muscle heavy chain cause failure of dorsal closure, during which the lateral epidermal cells elongate to cover the dorsal surface of the embryo after germ band retraction. Axon pathfinding and head involution defects also contribute to the embryonic lethality of zipper mutants. Early dorsal closure is normal in these mutants, suggesting that maternal coded Zipper protein is sufficient for early stages of closure. By late closure however, nonmuscle myosin is either improperly localized in or absent from the leading edge of the lateral epithelium. By the time zip mutant embryos arrest during late dorsal closure stages, the leading edge is dramatically disorganized, the lateral epidermis is not fused along the dorsal midline, and the amnioserosa remains exposed. In normal flies, dorsal closure is accompanied by a dramatic cell shape change as the entire epidermal cell sheet thins out to spread over the amnioserosa. As dorsal closure proceeds, more and more cells throughout the epidermis are elongated. This change in epidermal cell shape, driven for the most part by maternal myosin II, is sufficient to account for the spreading of the lateral epithelium over the region occupied by the amnioserosa (Young, 1993).

Nonmuscle myosin II is also required for rapid cytoplasmic transport during oogenesis and for axial nuclear migration in early embryos. Developing oocytes containing germline mutant spaghetti squash(sqh) clones fail to attain full suze due to a defect in 'dumping,' the rapid phase of cytoplasmic transport in nurse cells. Spaghetti squash is the regulatory light chain of nonmuscle myosin II; along with the Essential light chain, it acts to regulate the function of Myosin II. Two subunits of the regulatory light chain, along with two subunits of the essential light chain, each combine with two subunits of Myosin II to form the functional Myosin II hexamer. spaghetti squash mutant egg chambers show no evidence of ring canal obstruction, and no obvious alteration in the actin network. However, the distribution of myosin II is abnormal. It is thought that the molecular motor responsible for cytoplasmic dumping is supplied largely, if not exclusively by nurse cell myosin II. Regulation of myosin activity is one means by which cytoplasmic transport is controlled during oocyte development. Fertilized eggs developed from spaghetti squash maternal mutant clones begin development by exhibiting an early defect in axial migration of cleavage nuclei toward the posterior pole of the embryo. This is similar to development seen in early cleavage zygotes, in which the actin cytoskeleton is disrupted. Thus both nurse cell dumping and axial migration of the zygotic nuclei require maternally supplied myosin II (Wheatley, 1995).

In order to study the role of myosin II during imaginal disc development, spaghetti squash was put under control of a heat shock promoter and induced at various times in sqh mutants. sqh mutants can be rescued to adulthood by daily induction of sqh from a hsp 70 promoter. When SQH is transiently depleted in larvae, the resulting adult phenotypes demonstrate that SQH is required in a stage-specific fashion for proper development of eye and leg imaginal discs. When SQH is depleted in adult females, oogenesis is reversibly disrupted. Without SQH induction, developing egg chambers display a succession of phenotypes that demonstrate roles for myosin II in morphogenesis of the interfollicular stalks, three morphologically and mechanistically distinct types of follicle cell migration, and completion of nurse cell cytoplasm transport (dumping) (Edwards, 1996).

Normally at stage 9 of oogenesis, approximately eight so-called border cells form at the anterior tip of the egg chamber, delaminate, and migrate past the phalanx of nurse cells until they reach the anterior tip of the oocyte. This migration of border cells between and through the nurse cells is abnormal in sqh mutants. Normal border cell myosin II staining is much brighter than that of the surrounding nurse cells, indicating a presence of myosin II in border cells. Centripetal cells, a second morphologically distinct type of follicle cell, is derived from the most anterior ring of oocyte follicle cells. Centripetal cells normally elongate and plunge inward toward the border cells, which have come to rest at the anterior face of the oocyte. These centripetal cells will eventually cover the anterior of the oocyte and build several specialized structures of the anterior chorion. Each centripetal cell specifically accumulates a bright bar of myosin II staining at the edge of the apical (inner) surface that leads the penetration between the nurse cells and the oocyte (Edwards, 1996).

sqh mutant ovaries also display major defects in migration of centripetal cells. After three days without SQH, centripetal cells fail to elongate. Follicle cells that construct the dorsal appendages also fail to migrate properly as the supply of SQH dwindles and eventually is depleted. A shortage of SQH in migrating cells appears to be the primary cause of the shortened dorsal appendage phenotype found in sqh mutants (Edwards, 1996).

In sqh mutant tissues, Myosin II heavy chain is abnormally localized in punctate structures that do not contain appreciable amounts of filamentous actin or the myosin tail binding protein p127. p127 is coded for by the gene lethal (2) giant larvae tumor suppressor gene. In follicle cells, p127 is normally concentrated at the lateral membranes. In sqh mutant tissue, p127 shows the same pattern, with no punctate cytoplasmic staining. Likewise F-actin is not mislocalized in sqh mutants. Thus sqh mutations cause mislocalization of myosin, but not the other major cytoskeletal proteins (Edwards, 1996).

GENE STRUCTURE

The nonmuscle myosin heavy chain from Drosophila contains an alternatively spliced exon at the 5' end which generates two distinct heavy-chain transcripts: the longer transcript inserts an additional start codon upstream of the primary translation start site and encodes a myosin heavy chain with a 45-residue extension at its amino terminus. The shorter transcript is 3.5 times more abundant than the longer one (Ketchum, 1990).

A second alternative exon (40aa) is close to the nucleotide binding pocket. The position, size and sequence of this exon is conserved in D. simulans and putative alternative exons of different size (7 to 16 aa), but identical positions have been reported for other myosins in many phyla. The functional significance of either alternative splice is not clear (Mansfield, 1996)

Exons - 14

Bases in 3' UTR - 188

PROTEIN STRUCTURE

Amino Acids - 2057

Structural Domains

The coding sequence of zipper reveals extensive homology with other conventional myosins, especially metazoan nonmuscle and smooth muscle myosin isoforms. Comparisons among available myosin heavy-chain sequences establish that characteristic differences in sequence throughout the length of both the globular myosin head and extended rod-like tail readily distinguish nonmuscle and smooth muscle myosins from striated muscle isoform,s and predict a basis for their functional diversity. The ATP binding region is in the first 200 amino acids. The actin binding region is within 30 amino acids centered on amino acid 670. The myosin tail includes the 1085 residues from leucine-843 to leucine-1927 and is characterized by a strong heptad repeat, common to conventional myosin tails and other alpha-helical coiled-coil proteins. These regions dimerize and fold into the extended rod-like tail of the native Drosophila myosin molecule. The hinge region is in the center of the tail sequence. The terminal 47 amino acids consist of the globular tail region. The tail region contains putative casein kinase II and protein kinase C phosphorylation sites (Ketchum, 1990 and Mansfield, 1996).

date revised:  22 Dec 96

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