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PERSPECTIVE
Neurogenetics Laboratory, Department of Neurosciences, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
In 1951, Douglas Scott Falconer first described the reeler spontaneous mutant mouse (Falconer 1951
). In those mice, cortical neurons are generated normally but migrate abnormally, resulting in an inversion of the cortical laminar organization, with later-born neurons remaining in the deeper layers of the cortex. Forty-four years later, DArcangelo et al. (1995)
identified the causative gene Rln and the encoded protein Reelin. Reelin pathway mutants, and particularly mice with mutations of its intracellular effector Dab1 (Disabled-1), probably represent the most-studied phenotype of altered neuronal migration. The observations that mutations of Dab1 phenocopy the Rln mutation, and that Dab1 is up-regulated in reeler mice suggested the existence of a negative feedback loop in Reelin signaling via the regulation of Dab1 levels. In the previous issue of Genes & Development, Feng et al. (2007)
presented the first coherent model to explain the mechanism of Reelin-mediated Dab1 down-regulation. They proposed that Reelin both activates and down-regulates its effector Dab1, first by inducing its phosphorylation, which then causes its targeting by an E3 ubiquitin ligase complex (EBC) containing SOCS family proteins and Cullin5 (Cul5). The impairment of this down-regulation mechanism in vivo leads to a unique phenotype in the cortex where neurons migrate past their target layer.
| The known side of Reelin/Dab1 signaling |
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In addition, Dab1 binds to and is phophorylated by nonreceptor tyrosine kinases from the Src family (SFK): Src and Fyn (Arnaud et al. 2003a
; Kuo et al. 2005
). Noticeably, the mouse Dab1 was originally identified in a yeast two-hybrid screen for Src-interacting proteins (Howell et al. 1997
). Src and Fyn are activated (phosphorylated) through the Reelin pathway, and thus together, Dab1 tyrosine phosphorylation and SFK phosphorylation are two interdependent mechanisms that are part of a positive feedback loop (Arnaud et al. 2003b
; Bock and Herz 2003
).
In the developing cortex, Reelin is specifically expressed by horizontally orientated Cajal-Retzius neurons located in the preplate before its splitting and then in the outermost layer of the cortex (the marginal zone of the developing brain, becoming layer I of the mature brain) (Fig. 1; DArcangelo et al. 1995
; Ogawa et al. 1995
). On the other hand, ApoER2, VLDLR, and Dab1 are expressed by both cortical neurons and radial glia cells supporting their migration (Forster et al. 2002
; Frotscher et al. 2003
; Hartfuss et al. 2003
; Luque et al. 2003
). Strikingly, mutations of both VLDLR and ApoER2, of Dab1 and particularly point mutations at five Dab1 tyrosine phosphorylation sites (Dab15F mutation of Tyr185, Tyr198, Tyr200, Tyr220, and Tyr232), or mutation of both SFK Src and Fyn result in a phenocopy of the reeler phenotype, with a failure to split the preplate as well as inverting cortical layering (Howell et al. 1997
, 2000
; Sheldon et al. 1997
; Benhayon et al. 2003
; Kuo et al. 2005
), validating that they participate in a common signaling pathway regulating cortical neuronal migration.
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| Down-regulating Dab1 |
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Feng et al. (2007)
identifed another type of EBC potentially regulating Dab1 in vivo. They also used nonneuronal cells lines such as COS7, in which Dab1, when coexpressed with Fyn and Src, is known to be constitutively tyrosine phophorylated but not degraded. This suggests that a component of the degradation machinery targeting phospho-tyrosine Dab1 is absent or limiting in this in vitro system, which thus makes it particularly adapted for a candidate approach. Feng et al. (2007)
tested several E3 ubiquitin ligases in this nonneuronal cell system and show that the SOCS1–3 ligases can bind to Dab1, and induce Tyr185 or Tyr198 phophorylated Dab1 degradation, in a Fyn-dependent manner. Interestingly, they also tested Cbl in this assay and show that it fails to induce Dab1 degradation, further invalidating the Cbl implication hypothesis. Because many SOCS proteins are expressed during brain development (among them SOCS1–3) and might be functionally redundant, Feng et al. (2007)
chose to study the consequence of the inactivation of another component of the SOCS-containing EBC on Reelin-induced degradation of Dab1: the cullin Cul5 (Petroski and Deshaies 2005
). Cul5 recently has been shown and confirmed in the study by Feng et al. (2007)
to be expressed in mouse cortical neurons (Lein et al. 2007
), but its role was so far completely unknown. Feng et al. (2007)
showed that in cultured cortical neurons, Cul5 binds to Dab1, and that Cul5 knockdown specifically protects Dab1 from Reelin-induced degradation. Noticeably, Dab1 interaction with ubiquitin ligases may also have other biological significance. Dab1 has been shown to interact with the E3 ubiquitin ligase Siah-1A in yeast two-hybrid assays and coimmunoprecipitation experiments in 293T cells. But in that case, Dab1–Siah1 binding induces the inhibition of Siah-1A ubiquitinating activity (Park et al. 2003
). Thus, one might wonder if Dab1 could additionally regulate EBC containing SOCS and Cul5 as well, adding a step to the complexity of this Reelin feedback loop.
| Overmigration: when Dab1 down-regulation fails to occur |
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31,2-N-acetyl- glucosaminyl-transferase 1)-deficient mice, in which cortical neurons overmigrate past the neural boundary through breaches in the pia matter caused by overgrown radial glial endfeet (Hu et al. 2007
In the developing cortex, neurons migrate along the processes of their parental radial glia from the ventricular zone to the more superficial cortical layer and stop when they reach the marginal zone. Later-born neurons migrate through previously deposited neurons in cortical plate, leading to an inside-out lamination of the cortex (Fig. 1). The reeler phenotype displayed by Rln-deficient mice as well as mice deficient for VLDLR and ApoER2, Dab1, and Src and Fyn mutant show a rough inversion of the normal inside-out pattern of cortical migration and an excess of neurons in the normally cell-sparse marginal zone (Caviness and Sidman 1973
; Howell et al. 1997
, 2000
; Sheldon et al. 1997
; Benhayon et al. 2003
; Kuo et al. 2005
). The commonly accepted explanation for this phenotype is that the newly arrived neurons fail to penetrate the preplate and split it appropriately into the marginal zone and subplate, and cannot bypass previously deposited neurons and accumulate in an outside-in manner. Dab1 seems necessary to achieve the bypassing step in mosaic Dab1 wt; Dab1–/– embryos, mutant neurons lie below wild-type neurons (Hammond et al. 2001
), and BrdU pulse-labeling experiments showed that Dab1 knockdown neurons accumulate in deep cortical plate and fail to pass their earlier-born siblings. Furthermore, neurons showing an abnormally high level of Dab1 migrate presumably faster through the cortical plate and stick to the marginal zone, preventing the passage of their siblings (Feng et al. 2007
).
Overall, those results strongly suggest that Dab1 is necessary for neurons to cross previously deposited neuronal layers, and in turn, Dab1 should be down-regulated in neurons to properly terminate their migration and allow their siblings to bypass them. According to this hypothesis, a precise regulation of Dab1 levels should be required to control the precise location of the migration arrest. A threshold response to a gradient of a signaling molecule may be an efficient way to control a timely stop. However, maintaining a Reelin gradient within the cortical plate may be difficult as the depth and the layered organization of the cortical plate are continuously changing. A transcriptional mode of regulation implies latency of protein synthesis, which is slow in the case of Dab1, and of the protein half-life (12 h for Dab1) (Arnaud et al. 2003a
), and thus is probably not an appropriate way to control a timely switch mechanism. Controlling expression level by regulating the degradation of a constantly synthesized protein, in a continuously responding neuron can constitute a very efficient method, in contrast. In migrating cortical neurons, Dab1 is constantly down-regulated (as implied by the fact that in reeler mice, the Dab1 level is increased throughout the depth of the cortex) (Arnaud et al. 2003a
) via the Cul5/SOCS-containing E3 ligase complex. Dab1 regulation thus relies on the EBC activity, which may be rapidly controlled by protein complex assembly, to rapidly decrease Dab1 levels and definitively terminate neuronal migration.
Although knockdown results are very informative, essential complementary data would come from the analysis of the brain phenotype of Cul5-deficient mice. The inhibition of ubiquitination in cortical slices by Bock and Herz (2003)
may provide some clues. Those slices showed massive disorganization of the layering; however, complementary cell tracing experiments, necessary to fully understand this phenotype, were not performed. In humans, cortical migration disorders caused by Reelin signaling deficiency lead to classical lissencephaly (Hong et al. 2000
; Boycott et al. 2005
; Chang et al. 2007
; Zaki et al. 2007
), a condition characterized by a paucity of cortical gyration, leading to severe epilepsy and mental retardation. Impairment of the down-regulation component of Reelin signaling is thus predicted to cause strong cortical developmental defects as well. A precise description of the phenotype of the Cul5-deficient mice cortex may pinpoint human brain abnormalities linked to this mechanism.
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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E-MAIL jogleeson{at}ucsd.edu; FAX (858) 534-1437. ![]()
Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1622907
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Genes & Dev. 2007 21: 2717-2730.
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