Abstract
MUTATIONS at the nude locus of mice and rats disrupt normal hair growth and thymus development1,2, causing nude mice and rats to be immune-deficient. The mouse nude locus has been localized on chromosome 11 (refs 3, 4) within a region of < 1 megabase5. Here we show that one of the genes from this critical region, designated whn, encodes a new member of the winged-helix domain family of transcription factors6,7, and that it is disrupted on mouse nu and rat rnuN alleles. Mutant transcripts do not encode the character-istic DNA-binding domain, strongly suggesting that the whn gene is the nude gene. Mutations in winged-helix domain genes cause homeotic transformations in Drosophila8 and distort cell-fate deci-sions during vulval development in Caenorhabditis elegans9. The whn gene is thus the first member of this class of genes to be implicated in a specific developmental defect in vertebrates.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Lyon, M. F. & Searle, A. G. Genetic Variants and Strains of the Laboratory Mouse (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK, 1989).
Hedrich, H. (ed.). Genetic Monitoring of Inbred Strains of Rats (Fischer, Stuttgart, Germany, 1990).
Takahashi, Y. et al. J. exp. Med. 175, 873–876 (1992).
Lisitsyn, A. N. et al. Nature Genet. 6, 57–63 (1994).
Nehls, M. et al. Eur. J. Immun. 24, 1721–1723 (1994).
Weigel, D. & Jäckle, H. Cell 63, 455–456 (1990).
Lai, E., Clark, K. L., Burley, S. K. & Darnell, J. E. Jr Proc. natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 90, 10421–10423 (1993).
Weigel, D., Jürgens, G., Küttner, F., Seifer, E. & Jäckle, H. Cell 57, 645–658 (1989).
Miller, L. M., Gallegos, M. E., Morisseau, B. A. & Kim, S. K. Genes Dev. 7, 933–947 (1993).
Nehls, M., Pfeifer, D. & Boehm, T. Oncogene 9, 2169–2176 (1994).
Cordier, A. C. & Haumont, S. M. Am. J. Anat. 157, 227–263 (1980).
Köpf-Maier, P., Mbonenko, V. F. & Merker, H. J. Acta anat. 139, 178–190 (1990).
van Vliet, E. et al. Eur. J. Immun. 15, 675–681 (1985).
Palacios, R. & Samaridis, J. Eur. J. Immun. 21, 109–113 (1991).
Li, C., Lusis, A. J., Sparkes, T., Tran, S. M. & Gaynor, R. Genomics 13, 658–664 (1992).
Mitchell, P. J. & Tijan, R. Science 245, 371–378 (1989).
Cash, J. M. et al. Mammal. Genome 4, 37–42 (1993).
Kozak, M. Nucleic Acids Res. 15, 8125–8148 (1987).
Lai, E., Prezioso, V. R., Tao, W., Chen, W. S. & Darnell, J. E. Jr Genes Dev. 5, 416–427 (1991).
Boehm, T. et al. Proc. natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 88, 4367–4371 (1991).
Sanger, F., Nicklen, S. & Coulson, A. Proc. natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 74, 5463–5467 (1977).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nehls, M., Pfeifer, D., Schorpp, M. et al. New member of the winged-helix protein family disrupted in mouse and rat nude mutations. Nature 372, 103–107 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1038/372103a0
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/372103a0
This article is cited by
-
OVOL2 sustains postnatal thymic epithelial cell identity
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models, applications and challenges in cancer research
Journal of Translational Medicine (2022)
-
In vitro and in vivo functions of T cells produced in complemented thymi of chimeric mice generated by blastocyst complementation
Scientific Reports (2022)
-
Weight-bearing activity impairs nuclear membrane and genome integrity via YAP activation in plantar melanoma
Nature Communications (2022)
-
Limits to in vivo fate changes of epithelia in thymus and parathyroid by ectopic expression of transcription factors Gcm2 and Foxn1
Scientific Reports (2022)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.