CEPsh glia development is not required for general AWC identity or AWC asymmetry

Rui Xiong; Yi-Wen Hsieh; Chiou-Fen Chuang

doi:10.17912/micropub.biology.000636

CEPsh glia development is not required for general AWC identity or AWC asymmetry

MicroPubl Biol. 2022 Sep 15:2022:10.17912/micropub.biology.000636. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000636. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Rui Xiong^#¹, Yi-Wen Hsieh^#¹, Chiou-Fen Chuang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA.
² Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The Caenorhabditis elegans VAB-3/Pax6 homeodomain protein was previously shown to play a role in both the development of cephalic sheath (CEPsh) glia and asymmetric differentiation of AWC olfactory neuron subtypes AWC ^ON /AWC ^OFF . Here we show that vab-3 is not required for the specification of general AWC identity. We also show that some vab-3 mutant alleles with defective CEPsh glia development displayed wild-type AWC asymmetry. These results suggest that vab-3 has separable roles in CEPsh glia development and AWC asymmetry. Together, our results suggest that general AWC identity and AWC asymmetry are not dependent on the development of CEPsh glia.