Conservation of dishevelled structure and function between flies and mice: isolation and characterization of Dvl2

The segment polarity gene dishevelled (dsh) of Drosophila is required for pattern formation of the embryonic segments and the adult imaginal discs. dsh encodes the earliest-acting and most specific known component of the signal transduction pathway of Wingless, an extracellular signal homologous to Wnt1 in mice. We have previously described the isolation and characterization of the Dvl1 mouse dsh homolog. We report here the isolation of a second mouse dsh homolog, Dvl2, which maps to chromosome 11. The Dvl2 amino acid sequence is equally related to the dsh sequence as is that of Dvl1, but Dvl2 is most similar to the Xenopus homolog Xdsh. However, unlike the other vertebrate dsh homologs. Like the other genes, Dvl2 is ubiquitously expressed throughout most of embryogenesis and is expressed in many adult organs. We have developed an assay for dsh function in fly embryos, and show that Dvl2 can partially rescue the segmentation defects of embryos devoid of dsh. Thus, Dvl2 encodes a mammalian homolog of dsh which can transduce the Wingless signal.