Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 241, Issue 1, 1 January 2002, Pages 145-156
Developmental Biology

Regular Article
JNK Signaling Pathway Is Required for Efficient Wound Healing in Drosophila

https://doi.org/10.1006/dbio.2001.0502Get rights and content
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Abstract

Efficient wound healing including clotting and subsequent reepithelization is essential for animals ranging from insects to mammals to recover from epithelial injury. It is likely that genes involved in wound healing are conserved through the phylogeny and therefore, Drosophila may be an useful in vivo model system to identify genes necessary during this process. Furthermore, epithelial movement during specific developmental processes, such as dorsal closure, ressembles of those seen in mammalian wound healing. As puckered (puc) gene is a target of the JUN N-terminal kinase signaling pathway during dorsal closure, we investigated puc gene expression during wound healing in Drosophila. We showed that puc gene expression is induced at the edge of the wound in epithelial cells and Jun kinase is phosphorylated in wounded epidermal tissues, suggesting that the JUN N-terminal kinase signaling pathway is activated by a signal produced by an epidermal wound. In the absence of the Drosophila c-Fos homologue, puc gene expression is no longer induced. Finally, impaired epithelial repair in JUN N-terminal kinase deficient flies demonstrates that the JUN N-terminal kinase signaling is required to initiate the cell shape change at the onset of the epithelial wound healing. We conclude that the embryonic JUN N-terminal kinase gene cassette is induced at the edge of the wound. In addition, Drosophila appears as a good in vivo model to study morphogenetic processes requiring epithelial regeneration such as wound healing in vertebrates.

Keywords

Drosophila
puckered
dual specificity phosphatase
epithelial cell shape
Fos
wound healing
JNK signaling
epithelial morphogenetic process
dorsal closure
MAPK kinase pathway

Cited by (0)

1

Both authors have equally contributed to this work.

2

To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax: 617 632 6845. E-mail: [email protected].