PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Cuie Chen
AU  - Ryan Cummings
AU  - Aghapi Mordovanakis
AU  - Alan J. Hunt
AU  - Michael Mayer
AU  - David Sept
AU  - Yukiko M. Yamashita
TI  - Cytokine receptor-Eb1 interaction couples cell polarity and fate during asymmetric cell division
AID  - 10.1101/229047
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 229047
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/04/229047.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/04/229047.full
AB  - Asymmetric stem cell division is a critical mechanism for balancing self-renewal and differentiation. Adult stem cells often orient their mitotic spindle to place one daughter inside the niche and the other outside of it to achieve asymmetric division. It remains unknown whether and how the niche may direct division orientation. Here we discover a novel and evolutionary conserved mechanism that couples cell polarity to cell fate. We show that the cytokine receptor homolog Dome, acting downstream of the niche-derived ligand Upd, directly binds to the microtubule-binding protein Eb1 to regulate spindle orientation in Drosophila male germline stem cells (GSCs). Dome’s role in spindle orientation is entirely separable from its known function in self-renewal mediated by the JAK-STAT pathway. We propose that integration of two functions (cell polarity and fate) in a single receptor is a key mechanism to ensure an asymmetric outcome following cell division.