Journal
MECHANISMS OF DEVELOPMENT
Volume 115, Issue 1-2, Pages 41-51Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/S0925-4773(02)00120-X
Keywords
Notch; furin; Drosophila; mammal; protein maturation
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Funding
- NIGMS NIH HHS [GM25103] Funding Source: Medline
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Notch (N) is a large transmembrane protein that acts as a receptor in an evolutionarily conserved intercellular signalling pathway. Because of this conservation, it has been assumed that biochemical events mediating N function are identical in all species. For instance, intracellular maturation by fur-in protease and subunit assembly leading to the formation of a heterodimeric cell surface N receptor are thought to be central to its function in both mammals and flies. However, in Drosophila the majority of N appears to be full-length. It has not been deter-mined whether this full-length N protein is on the cell surface. We describe experiments which indicate that unlike mammalian N, the majority of Drosophila N on the cell surface is full-length and that in Drosophila, in vivo, fur-in cleavage is not required for biological activity. We further show that the behaviour of fly and mouse N can be interchanged simply by swapping the regions in which the mammalian furin-like cleavage site is located. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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