The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 36 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The insect nephrocyte is a podocyte-like cell with a filtration slit diaphragm
Open accessAbstract
The nephron is the basic structural and functional unit of the vertebrate kidney. It is composed of a glomerulus, the site of ultrafiltration, and a renal tubule, along which the filtrate is modified. Although widely regarded as a vertebrate adaptation, ‘nephron-like’ features can be found in the excretory systems of many invertebrates, raising the possibility that components of the vertebrate excretory system were inherited from their invertebrate ancestors. Here we show that the insect nephrocyte has remarkable anatomical, molecular and functional similarity to the glomerular podocyte, a cell in the vertebrate kidney that forms the main size-selective barrier as blood is ultrafiltered to make urine. In particular, both cell types possess a specialized filtration diaphragm, known as the slit diaphragm in podocytes or the nephrocyte diaphragm in nephrocytes. We find that fly (Drosophila melanogaster) orthologues of the major constituents of the slit diaphragm, including nephrin, NEPH1 (also known as KIRREL), CD2AP, ZO-1 (TJP1) and podocin, are expressed in the nephrocyte and form a complex of interacting proteins that closely mirrors the vertebrate slit diaphragm complex. Furthermore, we find that the nephrocyte diaphragm is completely lost in flies lacking the orthologues of nephrin or NEPH1—a phenotype resembling loss of the slit diaphragm in the absence of either nephrin (as in human congenital nephrotic syndrome of the Finnish type, NPHS1) or NEPH1. These changes markedly impair filtration function in the nephrocyte. The similarities we describe between invertebrate nephrocytes and vertebrate podocytes provide evidence suggesting that the two cell types are evolutionarily related, and establish the nephrocyte as a simple model in which to study podocyte biology and podocyte-associated diseases.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Comprehensive insect physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology
(1985) · Journal of Insect Physiology · doi:10.1016/0022-1910(85)90117-9 · Cited by 4,810
Microscopic anatomy of invertebrates
Harrison, F. W. (1991) · Wiley-Liss eBooks · Cited by 2,736
Kestilä, M., Lenkkeri, U., Männikkö, M., Lamerdin, J., McCready, P., Putaala, H., Ruotsalainen, V., Morita, T., Nissinen, M., Herva, R., et al. (1998) · Molecular Cell · doi:10.1016/s1097-2765(00)80057-x · Cited by 1,866
Comprehensive insect physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology
Brooks, G. T. (1985) · Insect Biochemistry · doi:10.1016/0020-1790(85)90131-3 · Cited by 1,594
Boute, N., Gribouval, O., Roselli, S., Benessy, F., Lee, H., Fuchshuber, A., Dahan, K., Gubler, M.-C., Niaudet, P., & Antignac, C. (2000) · Nature Genetics · doi:10.1038/74166 · Cited by 1,444
Congenital Nephrotic Syndrome in Mice Lacking CD2-Associated Protein
Shih, N.-Y., Li, J., Karpitskii, V., Nguyen, A., Dustin, M. L., Kanagawa, O., Miner, J. H., & Shaw, A. S. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.286.5438.312 · Cited by 861
Microscopic Anatomy of Invertebrates
GHIRADELLA, H. T. (1998) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 776
Nephrin is specifically located at the slit diaphragm of glomerular podocytes
Ruotsalainen, V., Ljungberg, P., Wartiovaara, J., Lenkkeri, U., Kestilä, M., Jalanko, H., Holmberg, C., & Tryggvason, K. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.14.7962 · Cited by 767
POROUS SUBSTRUCTURE OF THE GLOMERULAR SLIT DIAPHRAGM IN THE RAT AND MOUSE
Rodewald, R., & Karnovsky, M. J. (1974) · The Journal of Cell Biology · doi:10.1083/jcb.60.2.423 · Cited by 579
Schwarz, K., Simons, M., Reiser, J., Saleem, M. A., Faul, C., Kriz, W., Shaw, A. S., Holzman, L. B., & Mundel, P. (2001) · Journal of Clinical Investigation · doi:10.1172/jci12849 · Cited by 558
Cited by
The podocyte slit diaphragm--from a thin grey line to a complex signalling hub
Grahammer, F., Schell, C., & Huber, T. B. (2013) · Nature Reviews Nephrology · doi:10.1038/nrneph.2013.169 · Cited by 269
Vps34 Deficiency Reveals the Importance of Endocytosis for Podocyte Homeostasis
Bechtel, W., Helmstädter, M., Balica, J., Hartleben, B., Kiefer, B., Hrnjic, F., Schell, C., Kretz, O., Liu, S., Geist, F., et al. (2013) · Journal of the American Society of Nephrology · doi:10.1681/asn.2012070700 · Cited by 132
Rinschen, M. M., Gödel, M., Grahammer, F., Zschiedrich, S., Helmstädter, M., Kretz, O., Zarei, M., Braun, D. A., Dittrich, S., Pahmeyer, C., et al. (2018) · Cell Reports · doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2018.04.059 · Cited by 105
“To demonstrate that this resource may be used to find essential podocyte proteins, we analyzed the effect of knockdown of one candidate podocyte-enriched gene in Drosophila nephrocytes, an established model of podocyte function (Weavers et al., 2009; Zhang et al., 2013).”
BackgroundKim, S., Wairkar, Y. P., Daniels, R. W., & DiAntonio, A. (2010) · Journal of Cell Biology · doi:10.1083/jcb.200911126 · Cited by 82
Serotonergic reinforcement of a complete swallowing circuit
Schoofs, A., Miroschnikow, A., Schlegel, P., Zinke, I., Schneider-Mizell, C. M., Cardona, A., & Pankratz, M. J. (2023) · doi:10.1101/2023.05.26.542464 · Cited by 7
Metadata
- Authors
- Weavers, H., Prieto-Sánchez, S., Grawe, F., Garcia-López, A., Artero, R., Wilsch-Bräuninger, M., Ruiz-Gómez, M., Skaer, H., & Denholm, B.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2008-10-29
- Volume
- 457
- Issue
- 7227
- Pages
- 322-326
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2130552692
- Cited by
- 331
- References
- 36
- FWCI
- 8.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The insect nephrocyte is a podocyte-like cell with a filtration slit diaphragm. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/nature07526
- The paper
- Weavers, H., Prieto-Sánchez, S., Grawe, F., Garcia-López, A., Artero, R., Wilsch-Bräuninger, M., Ruiz-Gómez, M., Skaer, H., & Denholm, B. (2009). The insect nephrocyte is a podocyte-like cell with a filtration slit diaphragm. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07526
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
