Bicaudal-C Post-transcriptional regulator of cell fates and functions

Abstract

Bicaudal-C (Bicc1) is an evolutionarily conserved RNA binding protein that functions in a regulatory capacity in a variety of contexts. It was originally identified as a genetic locus in Drosophila that when disrupted resulted in radical changes in early development. In the most extreme phenotypes embryos carrying mutations developed with mirror image duplications of posterior structures and it was this striking phenotype that was responsible for the name Bicaudal. These seminal studies established Bicc1 as an important regulator of Drosophila development. What was not anticipated from the early work, but was revealed subsequently in many different organisms was the broad fundamental impact that Bicc1 proteins have on developmental biology; from regulating cell fates in vertebrate embryos to defects associated with several human disease states. In the following review we present a perspective of Bicc1 focusing primarily on the molecular aspects of its RNA metabolism functions in vertebrate embryos.

Nucleic acid-binding KH domain proteins influence a spectrum of biological pathways including as part of membrane-localized complexes

“…Null mutation of the encoding gene causes defective oogenesis and results in a tumorous germline phenotype ( Jones et al, 1996 , Jones and Inouye, 1996 ). Bicaudal-C (Bicc1) is a conserved embryonic RNA-binding protein with three KH domains that regulates Drosophila development by binding to the 3′ UTRs of target mRNAs thereby reducing their stability and repressing their translation ( Dowdle et al, 2022 ). Maternal knockdown and rescue experiments in Drosophila have demonstrated that KH domains of Bicc1 are required to regulate embryogenesis ( Dowdle et al, 2019 ).…”