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First published online 14 January 2009
doi: 10.1242/dev.027334
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Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
* Author for correspondence (e-mail: r.mayor{at}ucl.ac.uk)
Accepted 4 December 2008
Syndecan-4 (Syn4) is a heparan sulphate proteoglycan that is able to bind
to some growth factors, including FGF, and can control cell migration. Here we
describe a new role for Syn4 in neural induction in Xenopus. Syn4 is
expressed in dorsal ectoderm and becomes restricted to the neural plate.
Knockdown with antisense morpholino oligonucleotides reveals that Syn4 is
required for the expression of neural markers in the neural plate and in
neuralised animal caps. Injection of Syn4 mRNA induces the cell-autonomous
expression of neural, but not mesodermal, markers. We show that two parallel
pathways are involved in the neuralising activity of Syn4: FGF/ERK, which is
sensitive to dominant-negative FGF receptor and to the inhibitors SU5402 and
U0126, and a PKC pathway, which is dependent on the intracellular domain of
Syn4. Neural induction by Syn4 through the PKC pathway requires inhibition of
PKC
and activation of PKC
. We show that PKC
inhibits Rac
GTPase and that c-Jun is a target of Rac. These findings might account for
previous reports implicating PKC in neural induction and allow us to propose a
link between FGF and PKC signalling pathways during neural induction.
Key words: Neural induction, Syndecan-4, FGF, PKC, Rac, JNK, AP-1, c-Fos
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