We investigate how temporal and spatial interactions between multiple intercellular and intracellular factors specify the fate of a single cell in Caenorhabditis elegans. P12, which is a ventral cord neuroectoblast, divides postembryonically to generate neurons and a unique epidermal cell. Three classes of proteins are involved in the specification of P12 fate: the LIN-3/LET-23 epidermal growth...

ARTICLE SUMMARY The LIN-1 ETS transcription factor plays a pivotal role in controlling cell fate decisions during development of the Caenorhabditis elegans vulva. Prior to activation of the RTK/Ras/ERK signaling pathway, LIN-1 functions as a SUMOylated transcriptional repressor that inhibits the primary vulval cell fate. Here we demonstrate that LIN-1 binds two proteins predicted to repress tra...

lin-28 is a conserved regulator of cell fate succession in animals. In Caenorhabditis elegans, it is a component of the heterochronic gene pathway that governs larval developmental timing, while its vertebrate homologs promote pluripotency and control differentiation in diverse tissues. The RNA binding protein encoded by lin-28 can directly inhibit let-7 microRNA processing by a novel mechanism...

Stem cells switch between asymmetric and symmetric division to expand in number as tissues grow during development and in response to environmental changes. The stem cell intrinsic proteins controlling this switch are largely unknown, but one candidate is the Lin-28 pluripotency factor. A conserved RNA-binding protein that is downregulated in most animals as they develop from embryos to adults,...

During C. elegans vulval development, the anchor cell (AC) in the somatic gonad expresses lin-3, activating the EGF receptor signaling pathway in vulval precursor cells (VPCs) and thereby inducing and patterning VPCs. Previous studies with lin-3 mutants and transgene expression have revealed that the level of LIN-3 in the AC must be precisely regulated for proper vulval development. To understa...

The LIN-1 ETS transcription factor inhibits vulval cell fates during Caenorhabditis elegans development. We demonstrate that LIN-1 interacts with UBC-9, a small ubiquitin-related modifier (SUMO) conjugating enzyme. This interaction is mediated by two consensus sumoylation motifs in LIN-1. Biochemical studies showed that LIN-1 is covalently modified by SUMO-1. ubc-9 and smo-1, the gene encoding ...