Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 104, Issue 50, Pages 19873-19878Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707465104
Keywords
glucagon; insulin; neuroblast; pituitary; hypothalamus
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Funding
- NIDDK NIH HHS [DK19525, R01 DK069492, P30 DK019525] Funding Source: Medline
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Single-cell resolution lineage information is a critical key to understanding how the states of gene regulatory networks respond to cell interactions and thereby establish distinct cell fates. Here, we identify a single pair of neural stem cells (neuroblasts) as progenitors of the brain insulin-producing neurosecretory cells of Drosophila, which are homologous to islet 13 cells. Likewise, we identify a second pair of neuroblasts as progenitors of the neurosecretory Corpora cardiaca cells, which are homologous to the glucagon-secreting islet a cells. We find that both progenitors originate as neighboring cells from anterior neuroectoderm, which expresses genes orthologous to those expressed in the vertebrate adenohypophyseal placode, the source of endocrine anterior pituitary and neurosecretory hypothalamic cells [Whitlock KE (2005) Trends Endocrinol Metab 16:145-151]. This ontogenic-molecular concordance suggests that a rudimentary brain endocrine axis was present in the common ancestor of humans and flies, where it orchestrated the islet-like endocrine functions of insulin and glucagon biology.
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