[
Nature,
1987]
The molecular mechanisms responsible for development of metazoan pattern and form are largely unknown. Embryos have been described and experimentally manipulated for more than a century, but only in the past few years have some of the genes and proteins that influence, and perhaps govern, development been isolated and scrutinized. These genes, cloned chiefly from the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, constitute the 'nuts-and-bolts' of developmental decision-making. The challenge to developmental biologists today is to understand the functions of these genes and to describe them in biochemical terms. Results reported at a recent meeting indicate that some elucidation of development at a molecular level will emerge from investigations of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans.
[
Nature,
1999]
Advances in human genetics have meant that the genes mutated in human diseases can be identified exclusively by their location in the genome. But how do we work out the cellular functions of the associated protein products? Reports on pages 383 and 386 of this issue begin to address this problem for two proteins - polycystin-1 (PKD1) and polycystin-2 (PKD2) - that are defective in human kidney disease. From their studies of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, Barr and Sternberg present evidence that homologues of the polycystins act together in a signal-transduction pathway in sensory neurons. Chen et al., by contrast, have used an oocyte-expression system in the from Xenopus laevis to show that a homologue of PKD2 is associated with the activity of a cation channel. These results support the hypothesis that polycystin-related proteins belong to a hitherto unknown class of signal-transduction molecules.