Norimasa Iwanami, Tomokazu Higuchi, Yumi Sasano, Toshinobu Fujiwara, Vu Q Hoa, Minoru Okada, Sadiqur R Talukder, Sanae Kunimatsu, Jie Li, Fumi Saito, Chitralekha Bhattacharya, Angabin Matin, Takashi Sasaki, Nobuyoshi Shimizu, Hiroshi Mitani, Heinz Himmelbauer, Akihiro Momoi, Hisato Kondoh, Makoto Furutani-Seiki, Yousuke Takahama
The thymus is a vertebrate-specific organ where T lymphocytes are generated. Genetic programs that lead to thymus development are incompletely understood. We previously screened ethylnitrosourea-induced medaka mutants for recessive defects in thymus development. Here we report that one of those mutants is caused by a missense mutation in a gene encoding the previously uncharacterized protein WDR55 carrying the tryptophan-aspartate-repeat motif. We find that WDR55 is a novel nucleolar protein involved in the production of ribosomal RNA (rRNA)...
August 29, 2008: PLoS Genetics