Nature 379, 746 - 749 (22 February 1996); doi:10.1038/379746a0

RNA binding and translational suppression by bicoid

Rolando Rivera-Pomar^*, Dierk Niessing^*, Urs Schmidt-Ott^*, Walter J. Gehring^† & Herbert Jacklë^*

^* Abteilung Molekulare Entwicklungsbiologie, Max-Planck-lnstitut für biophysikalische Chemie, Am Fassberg, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
^† Biozentrum der Universität Basel, Klingelbergstrasse 70, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland

THE anterior determinant bicoid (bcd) of Drosophila is a homeo-domain protein. It forms an anterior-to-posterior gradient in the embryo and activates, in a concentration-dependent manner, several zygotic segmentation genes during blastoderm formation^1–4. Its posterior counterpart, the homeodomain transcription factor caudal (cad)^5–7, forms a concentration gradient in the opposite direction, emanating from evenly distributed messenger RNA in the egg. In embryos lacking bed activity as a result of mutation, the cad gradient fails to form and cad becomes evenly distributed throughout the embryo⁸. This suggests that bed may act in the region-specific control of cad mRNA translation. Here we report that bed binds through its homeodomain to cad mRNA in vitro, and exerts translational control through a bed-binding region of cad mRNA.

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