ArticleNature neuroscience2011
Coordinated regulation of cholinergic motor neuron traits through a conserved terminal selector gene.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 128 papers.
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Who cites it
128 citing papers in PubMed, 196 citations in OpenAlex.
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- PBX-dependent and independent Hox programs establish and maintain motor neuron terminal Identity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Intrinsic and non-cell autonomous roles for a neurodevelopmental syndrome-linked transcription factor.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Regulation of motor neuron differentiation in thebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cell type-specific functions of the PBAF chromatin-remodeling complex in neuronal diversification.Nature communications · 2025Article
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- Neuron-specific Agrin splicing by Nova RNA-binding proteins regulates conserved neuromuscular junction development in chordates.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Pervasive homeobox gene function in the male-specific nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2025Article
- A gene regulatory network for specification and morphogenesis of a Mauthner Cell homolog in non-vertebrate chordates.Developmental biology · 2025Article
68 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Cholinergic motor neurons are defined by the coexpression of a battery of genes encoding proteins that act sequentially to synthesize, package and degrade acetylcholine and reuptake its breakdown product, choline. How expression of these critical motor neuron identity determinants is controlled and coordinated is not understood. We show here that, in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, all members of the cholinergic gene battery, as well as many other markers of terminal motor neuron fate, are co-regulated by a shared cis-regulatory signature and a common trans-acting factor, the phylogenetically conserved COE (Collier, Olf, EBF)-type transcription factor UNC-3. UNC-3 initiated and maintained expression of cholinergic fate markers and was sufficient to induce cholinergic fate in other neuron types. UNC-3 furthermore operated in negative feedforward loops to induce the expression of transcription factors that repress individual UNC-3-induced terminal fate markers, resulting in diversification of motor neuron differentiation programs in specific motor neuron subtypes. A chordate ortholog of UNC-3, Ciona intestinalis COE, was also both required and sufficient for inducing a cholinergic fate. Thus, UNC-3 is a terminal selector for cholinergic motor neuron differentiation whose function is conserved across phylogeny.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.