Wingless Signaling: A Genetic Journey from Morphogenesis to Metastasis

Genetics: A Periodical Record of Investigations Bearing on Heredity and Variation

article

Amy Bejsovec¹ 

[1] Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708

关键词: beta-catenin;    FlyBook;    signal transduction;    Wingless;    Wnt;   

DOI  :  10.1534/genetics.117.300157

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Genetics Society of America

【 摘 要 】

This FlyBook chapter summarizes the history and the current state of our understanding of the Wingless signaling pathway. Wingless, the fly homolog of the mammalian Wnt oncoproteins, plays a central role in pattern generation during development. Much of what we know about the pathway was learned from genetic and molecular experiments in Drosophila melanogaster , and the core pathway works the same way in vertebrates. Like most growth factor pathways, extracellular Wingless/Wnt binds to a cell surface complex to transduce signal across the plasma membrane, triggering a series of intracellular events that lead to transcriptional changes in the nucleus. Unlike most growth factor pathways, the intracellular events regulate the protein stability of a key effector molecule, in this case Armadillo/β-catenin. A number of mysteries remain about how the “destruction complex” destabilizes β-catenin and how this process is inactivated by the ligand-bound receptor complex, so this review of the field can only serve as a snapshot of the work in progress.

【 授权许可】

CC BY