Incredible journey: how do developmental signals travel through tissue?
Abstract
How developmental signaling proteins traverse tissue during animal development, through or around tightly packed cells, remains an incompletely resolved mystery. Signaling protein movement is regulated to create gradients, control amounts, impose barriers, or provide direction. Signaling can be controlled by the rate of signal production, modification, active transport, trapping along the path, or by the properties of the receptor apparatus. Signals may move by diffusion outside cells, attached to migrating cells, attached to carrier molecules, through cells by transcytosis, along cell extensions, or in released membrane packets. Recent findings about the movement of Hedgehog, Wingless (Wnt), and TGF-β signaling proteins have helped to clarify the molecular mechanisms used to ensure that developmental signals carry only good news.
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Footnotes
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↵2 Recent studies by Desbordes and Sanson (2003) and Han et al. (2004a) support an argument against a role for Dally or Dlp in Wg signaling. These results are in disagreement with earlier studies (e.g., Baeg et al. 2001; Gerlitz and Basler 2002; Takei et al. 2004). The discrepancy may arise from the different alleles, markers, or tissues used in the experiments (details can be found in Perrimon and Hacker 2004: Sanson 2004; Tabata 2004). Further studies will be required to settle the controversy.
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Article and publication are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1233104.
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↵1 Corresponding author. E-MAIL scott{at}cmgm.stanford.edu; FAX (650) 725-2952.
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
