A deletion screen for phenotypes of dilated cardiomyopathy, defined as enlarged end-diastolic and end-systolic dimensions, and impaired fractional shortening, was conducted in Drosophila. This resulted in the identification of a causative gene that was subsequently determined to encode a Notch ligand; the gene was given the name weary (wry). There are several low-scoring orthologs of Dmel\wry in human.
Using the GAL4/GAL80-ts system to precisely target expression in the fly adult heart, RNAi-effected loss of wry expression results in inducible and reversible dilated cardiomyopathy. Cardiac-specific expression of a transgenic wild-type copy of wry rescues the dilated cardiomyopathy phenotype of the deletion. Extending this analysis to other Notch signaling components, cardiac-specific expression of N, Dl, or Ser was also observed to rescue the dilated cardiomyopathy phenotype of the deletion.
For transgenic human constructs, fly transgenic constructs and classical alleles, detailed phenotypic descriptions can be found in the allele reports; allele reports can be accessed from the gene report or by clicking on the allele symbols in the Disease Ontology and Reagent tables below.
[updated Feb. 2018 by FlyBase; FBrf0222196]
Low-scoring ortholog of human DNER; Dmel\wry shares 27% identity and 42% similarity with the human gene.
Moderate- to high-scoring ortholog of human DLL1 and DLL4; Dmel\Dl shares 39% identity and 51-53% similarity with the human genes.
Moderate-scoring ortholog of human JAG1 and JAG2; Dmel\Ser shares 33-35% identity and 46% similarity with the human genes.
Moderate- to high-scoring ortholog of NOTCH1, NOTCH2, NOTCH3, NOTCH4. Dmel\N shares 43-44% identity and 56-57% similarity with NOTCH1, and NOTCH2; it is less closely related to NOTCH3 and NOTCH4.