Drosophila melanogaster Hedgehog cooperates with Frazzled to guide axons through a noncanonical signalling pathway

© 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. We report that the morphogen Hedgehog (Hh) is an axonal chemoattractant in the midline of Drosophila melanogaster embryos. Hh is present in the ventral nerve cord during axonal guidance and overexpression of hh in the midline causes ectopic midline crossing of FasIIpositive axonal tracts. In addition, we show that Hh influences axonal guidance via a noncanonical signalling pathway dependent on Ptc. Our results reveal that the Hh pathway cooperates with the Netrin/Frazzled pathway to guide axons through the midline in invertebrates.E.B. was supported by a fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación, D.R. was supported by the Eramus programme and a FPU fellowship (FPU 12/05765) and S.J.A. acknowledges a Ramon y Cajal Researcher position granted by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación. This work was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación (RYC-2007-00417)Peer reviewe