C. elegans has numerous putative cell adhesion receptors, many of which have vertebrate homologues. The simple body plan of C. elegans, its optical transparency and genetic tractability make it well suited for the study of adhesion receptors and their associated complexes (reviewed by Cox and Hardin in this issue, pp. 1885-1897). We focus here on receptors that are likely to directly mediate adhesion either between cells or to the extracellular matrix; for information on other cell surface receptors please refer to Hutter et al. (Hutter et al., 2000).
FIG1
Cadherins are calcium-dependent, homophilic, cell-cell adhesion receptors that regulate morphogenesis, pattern formation and cell migration (reviewed in Tepass, 1999; Vleminckx and Kemler, 1999). C. elegans is predicted to express 13 putative transmembrane proteins with extracellular cadherin repeats (Hill et al., 2001).
Two cadherin genes have been functionally characterized: hmr-1 and cdh-3. hmr-1 encodes...
