High impact information on apx-1

• The maternal genes apx-1 and glp-1 and establishment of dorsal-ventral polarity in the early C. elegans embryo [1].
• When expressed under control of the lag-2 promoter, an apx-1 cDNA can completely rescue a lag-2 null mutant [2].
• The earliest defect detected in pos-1 mutants is the failure to express APX-1 protein from maternally provided apx-1 mRNA, suggesting that POS-1 may have an important role in regulating the expression of maternal mRNAs in germline blastomeres [3].
• In this report, we show that APX-1 protein is expressed in the P2 blastomere and that a temperature-sensitive apx-1 mutant has a temperature-sensitive period between the 4-cell and 8-cell stages [4].
• Two maternal genes, apx-1 and pie-1, are required to distinguish the fates of equivalent blastomeres in the early Caenorhabditis elegans embryo [5].

Biological context of apx-1

• Instead, ABp from apx-1 embryos develops more like its sister ABa: it produces ABa-like pharyngeal cells and it recapitulates ABa-like cell lineages [5].

Other interactions of apx-1

• ABa and ABp, the other two sisters in a 4-cell embryo, are influenced to develop differently by cell signaling events that require the two genes apx-1 and glp-1 [6].
• Here, we computationally identify ten genes that encode potential ligands for LIN-12, and show that three of these genes, apx-1, dsl-1, and lag-2, are functionally redundant components of the lateral signal [7].

References