Abstract
Spatiotemporal modulation of the evolutionarily conserved, intercellular Notch signaling pathway is important in the development of many animals. Examples include the regulation of neural-epidermal fate decisions in neurogenic ectoderm of Drosophila and somitogenesis in vertebrate presomitic mesoderm. In both these and most other cases, it appears that Notch-class transmembrane receptors are ubiquitously expressed. Modulation of the pathway is achieved primarily by the localized expression of the activating ligand or by alteration of receptor specificity through a glycosyl transferase. In contrast, we present this report of an instance where the abundance of the Notch-class mRNA itself is dynamically regulated. Taking advantage of the long cell cycle of the two-cell-stage embryo of the leech Helobdella robusta, we show that this regulation is achieved at the levels of both transcript stability and transcription. Moreover, MAPK signaling plays a significant role in regulating accumulation of the transcript by virtue of its effect on Hro-notch mRNA stability. Intracellular injection of heterologous reporter mRNAs shows that the Hro-notch 3' UTR, containing seven AU-rich elements, is key to regulating transcript stability. Thus, we show that regulation of the Notch pathway can occur at a previously underappreciated level, namely that of transcript stability. Given that AU-rich elements occur in the 3' UTR of Notch-class genes in Drosophila, human, and Caenorhabditis elegans, regulation of Notch signaling by modulation of mRNA levels may be operating in other animals as well.