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Molecular and Cellular Biology, March 2000, p. 2285-2295, Vol. 20, No. 6
0270-7306/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Structure and Function Analysis of LIN-14, a Temporal Regulator of Postembryonic Developmental Events in Caenorhabditis elegans

Yang Hong, Rosalind C. Lee, and Victor Ambros^*

Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Received 6 July 1999/Returned for modification 5 October 1999/Accepted 27 December 1999

During postembryonic development of Caenorhabditis elegans, the heterochronic gene lin-14 controls the timing of developmental events in diverse cell types. Three alternative lin-14 transcripts are predicted to encode isoforms of a novel nuclear protein that differ in their amino-terminal domains. In this paper, we report that the alternative amino-terminal domains of LIN-14 are dispensable and that a carboxy-terminal region within exons 9 to 13 is necessary and sufficient for in vivo LIN-14 function. A transgene capable of expressing only one of the three alternative lin-14 gene products rescues a lin-14 null mutation and is developmentally regulated by lin-4. This shows that the deployment of alternative lin-14 gene products is not critical for the ability of LIN-14 to regulate downstream genes in diverse cell types or for the in vivo regulation of LIN-14 level by lin-4. The carboxy-terminal region of LIN-14 contains an unusual expanded nuclear localization domain which is essential for LIN-14 function. These results support the view that LIN-14 controls developmental timing in C. elegans by regulating gene expression in the nucleus.

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^* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Gilman Laboratories HB 6044, Maynard St., Hanover, NH 03755-3576. Phone: (603) 646-2525. Fax: (603) 646-1347. E-mail: vambros{at}dartmouth.edu.

Present address: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143.

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Molecular and Cellular Biology, March 2000, p. 2285-2295, Vol. 20, No. 6
0270-7306/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

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