High impact information on boss

• Delta/Notch and Boss/Sevenless signals act combinatorially to specify the Drosophila R7 photoreceptor [1].
• The R8-to-R7 signal is the transmembrane ligand Bride of Sevenless (Boss), which is received by the receptor tyrosine kinase Sevenless (Sev) and transduced via Ras activation within the presumptive R7 cell [1].
• Although the mutant allele was lethal, analysis of mutant clones generated by FLP/FRT recombination demonstrated that the Sevenless-mediated internalization of Boss was blocked in mutant Hsc70-4 eye disc epithelial cells [2].
• By screening for Drosophila mutants exhibiting aberrant bride of sevenless (Boss) staining patterns on eye imaginal disc epithelia, we have recovered a point mutation in Hsc70-4, the closest homologue to bovine clathrin uncoating ATPase [2].
• Among these, 21 independent insertions with expression of the boss reporter gene in the R8 cell were identified by a external eye morphology and staining with an antibody against Boss [3].

Biological context of boss

• This chimera was fully functional: it rescued the boss mutant phenotype, and its trafficking was indistinguishable from that of the wild-type Boss protein [4].
• DNA sequences were determined for three to five alleles of the bride-of-sevenless (boss) gene in each of four species of Drosophila [5].
• Comparison of the Drosophila Cu,Zn SOD amino acid sequences with the Cu,Zn SOD of Bos taurus and Xenopus laevis (whose three-dimensional structure has been elucidated) reveals conservation of all the protein's functionally important amino acids and no substitutions that dramatically change the charge or the polarity of the amino acids [6].

Anatomical context of boss

• The HRP activity of the chimera was used to follow HRP-Boss trafficking on the ultrastructural level through early and late endosomes in R7 cells [4].

Associations of boss with chemical compounds

• Because oligomerization appears to be a critical step in the activation of receptor tyrosine kinases, we used oligomerized forms of the Boss extracellular domain to test their ability to bind to Sevenless in vivo and restore R7 induction in vivo [7].

References