eyelid antagonizes wingless signaling during Drosophila development and has homology to the Bright family of DNA-binding proteins.

In Drosophila, pattern formation at multiple stages of embryonic and imaginal development depends on the same intercellular signaling pathways. We have identified a novel gene, eyelid (eld), which is required for embryonic segmentation, development of the notum and wing margin, and photoreceptor differentiation. In these tissues, eld mutations have effects opposite to those caused by wingless (wg) mutations. eld encodes a widely expressed nuclear protein with a region homologous to a novel family of DNA-binding domains. Based on this homology and on the phenotypic analysis, we suggest that Eld could act as a transcription factor antagonistic to the Wg pathway.