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Hedgehog acts as a somatic stem cell factor in the Drosophila ovary

Nature volume 410, pages 599–604 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Secreted signalling molecules of the Hedgehog (Hh) family have many essential patterning roles during development of diverse organisms including Drosophila and humans1,2. Although Hedgehog proteins most commonly affect cell fate, they can also stimulate cell proliferation. In humans several distinctive cancers, including basal-cell carcinoma, result from mutations that aberrantly activate Hh signal transduction3. In Drosophila, Hh directly stimulates proliferation of ovarian somatic cells4,5,6. Here we show that Hh acts specifically on stem cells in the Drosophila ovary. These cells cannot proliferate as stem cells in the absence of Hh signalling, whereas excessive Hh signalling produces supernumerary stem cells. We deduce that Hh is a stem-cell factor and suggest that human cancers due to excessive Hh signalling might result from aberrant expansion of stem cell pools.

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Figure 1: The Drosophila germarium.
Figure 2: Phospho-histone H3 labelling of follicle cells and somatic stem cells.
Figure 3: Counting somatic stem cells in wild-type and ptc mutant ovarioles.
Figure 4: Direct labelling of wild-type and ptc mutant somatic stem cells.
Figure 5: Somatic stem cell proliferation requires smo and ci activities.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Harrison, J. Jiang, N. Methot, N. Patel and A. Spradling for reagents; J. Briscoe for help with confocal microscopy; D. Rabinowitz for statistical modelling of stem cell behaviour; J. Erickson, J. Mohler, M. A. Price and R. Lavker for critical discussions. This work was supported by an NIH grant to D.K.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Yan Zhang & Daniel Kalderon

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  1. Yan Zhang
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Correspondence to Daniel Kalderon.

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Zhang, Y., Kalderon, D. Hedgehog acts as a somatic stem cell factor in the Drosophila ovary. Nature 410, 599–604 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35069099

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