High impact information on lin-45

• C. elegans lin-45 raf gene participates in let-60 ras-stimulated vulval differentiation [1].
• The lin-45 gene encodes a homologue of the raf family of serine/threonine kinases and is necessary for vulval differentiation [1].
• The MEK-2 protein may interact with the products of the lin-45 raf and mpk-1 MAP kinase genes, which also mediate vulval induction [2].
• Eliminating the inhibitory phosphorylation or mimicking activating phosphorylation sites is sufficient to confer constitutive activity upon lin-45 Raf and induce multi-vulva phenotypes in C.elegans [3].
• We examined the functional significance of these inhibitory and activating phosphorylations in Caenorhabditis elegans lin-45 Raf [3].

Biological context of lin-45

• A lin-45 raf enhancer screen identifies eor-1, eor-2 and unusual alleles of Ras pathway genes in Caenorhabditis elegans [4].
• This gene was located between lin-45 and unc-24 on chromosome IV where no homeogene has previously been mapped [5].
• Random mutagenesis and genetic screens for impaired Raf function in Caenorhabditis elegans were used to identify six loss-of-function alleles of lin-45 raf that result in a substitution of a single amino acid [6].
• The lin-45 alleles include three missense mutations that affect the Ras-binding domain, three missense mutations that affect the protein kinase domain, two missense mutations that affect the C-terminal 14-3-3 binding domain, three nonsense mutations, and one small deletion [7].

Associations of lin-45 with chemical compounds

• A nematode homologue of mammalian raf family protein serine/threonine kinases has been cloned and found to be encoded by the lin-45 gene [8].

Other interactions of lin-45

• We provide evidence that smg-7 is cotranscribed with the previously characterized gene lin-45 and show that null alleles of smg-7 confer a temperature-sensitive defect in NMD [9].
• Consistent with its negative function, overexpressing sur-5 from an extragenic array partially suppresses the Multivulva phenotype of an activated let-60 ras mutation and causes synergistic phenotypes with a lin-45 raf mutation [10].
• Drosophila MAP kinase kinase suppresses the vulvaless phenotype of lin-3, let-23 and lin-45 mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans [11].

References