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First published online October 24, 2008

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A Wnt-Wnt situation

Wnts are a large family of secreted signalling proteins that act via two main pathways, the canonical and non-canonical pathways, to play important roles in development. At least fifteen different Wnts are found in vertebrates, and each one appears to function in just one pathway and independently of other Wnts. Now, on p. 3719, Janet Heasman and colleagues report that two Wnts, Wnt5a and Wnt11, act together to activate both the canonical and non-canonical pathways during dorsoventral (DV) patterning in the Xenopus embryo. The authors arrive at this finding through investigating the action of maternal Dkk1, a canonical Wnt inhibitor, in DV patterning. Dkk1 turns out to inhibit both the canonical and non-canonical pathways by targeting maternal Wnt5a and Wnt11, which the authors show interact with each other. Surprisingly, they find that these Wnts are present as homodimers, rather than as monomers, which interact to generate larger signalling complexes. Future work should reveal whether such interactions form a general, hitherto unrecognised feature of Wnt signalling.

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Related articles in Development:

Wnt5a and Wnt11 interact in a maternal Dkk1-regulated fashion to activate both canonical and non-canonical signaling in Xenopus axis formation

Sang-Wook Cha, Emmanuel Tadjuidje, Qinghua Tao, Christopher Wylie, and Janet Heasman
Development 2008 135: 3719-3729. [Abstract] [Full Text]  

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Related articles in Development Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?