1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Departments of Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0725, USA
2. †Present address: Neural Morphology Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics, Yata 1111, Mishima, Shizuoka 411-8540, Japan

Correspondence to: Yuh-Nung Jan¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to Y.-N.J. (Email: yuhnung.jan@ucsf.edu).

Abstract

Precise patterning of dendritic fields is essential for neuronal circuit formation and function, but how neurons establish and maintain their dendritic fields during development is poorly understood. In Drosophila class IV dendritic arborization neurons, dendritic tiling, which allows for the complete but non-overlapping coverage of the dendritic fields^{1, 2, 3}, is established through a 'like-repels-like' behaviour of dendrites mediated by Tricornered (Trc), one of two NDR (nuclear Dbf2-related) family kinases in Drosophila^{4, 5, 6, 7}. Here we report that the other NDR family kinase, the tumour suppressor Warts/Lats (Wts)^{8, 9, 10}, regulates the maintenance of dendrites; in wts mutants, dendrites initially tile the body wall normally, but progressively lose branches at later larval stages, whereas the axon shows no obvious defects. We further provide biochemical and genetic evidence for the tumour suppressor kinase Hippo (Hpo)^{11, 15} as an upstream regulator of Wts and Trc for dendrite maintenance and tiling, respectively, thereby revealing important functions of tumour suppressor genes of the Hpo signalling pathway in dendrite morphogenesis.

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