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Determining how growth and differentiation are coordinated is key to understanding normal development, as well as disease states such as cancer, where that control is lost. We have previously shown that growth and neuronal differentiation are coordinated by the insulin receptor/target of rapamycin (TOR) kinase (InR/TOR) pathway. Here we show that the control of growth and differentiation diverge downstream of TOR. TOR regulates growth by controlling the activity of $6 kinase (S6K) and eIF4E. Loss of s6k delays differentiation, and is epistatic to the loss of tsc2, indicating that S6K acts downstream or in parallel to TOR in differentiation as in growth. However, loss of eIF4E inhibits growth but does not affect the timing of differentiation. We also show, for the first time in Drosophila, that there is crosstalk between the InR/TOR pathway and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling. InR/TOR signaling regulates the expression of several EGFR pathway components including pointedP2 (pntP2). In addition, reduction of EGFR signaling levels phenocopies inhibition of the InR/TOR pathway in the regulation of differentiation. Together these data suggest that InR/TOR signaling regulates the timing of differentiation through modulation of EGFR target genes in developing photoreceptors.

Insulin genes in mouse and rat compose a two-gene system in which Ins1 was retroposed from the partially processed mRNA of Ins2. When Ins1 originated and how it was retained in genomes still remain interesting problems. In this study, we used genomic approaches to detect insulin gene copy number variation in rodent species and investigated evolutionary forces acting on both Ins1 and Ins2. We characterized the phylogenetic distribution of the new insulin gene (Ins1) by Southern analyses and confirmed by sequencing insulin genes in the rodent genomes. The results demonstrate that Ins1 originated right before the mouse-rat split (~20 MYA), and both Ins1 and Ins2 are under strong functional constraints in these murine species. Interestingly, by examining a range of nucleotide polymorphisms, we detected positive selection acting on both Ins2 and Ins1 gene regions in the Mus musculus domesticus populations. Furthermore, three amino acid sites were also identified as having evolved under positive selection in two insulin peptides: two are in the signal peptide and one is in the C-peptide. Our data suggest an adaptive divergence in the mouse insulin two-gene system, which may result from the response to environmental change caused by the rise of agricultural civilization, as proposed by the thrifty-genotype hypothesis.

SDF-9 is a modulator of Caenorhabditis elegans insulin/IGF-1 signaling that may interact directly with the DAF-2 receptor. SDF-9 is a tyrosine phosphatase-like protein that, when mutated, enhances many partial loss-of-function mutants in the dauer pathway except for the temperature-sensitive mutant daf-2(m41). We propose that SDF-9 stabilizes the active phosphorylated state of DAF-2 or acts as an adaptor protein to enhance insulin-like signaling.