Coactivation of Rac and Rho by Wnt/Frizzled signaling is required for vertebrate gastrulation.

By Raymond Habas, I. Dawid, Xi He. Genes & Development, 2003

634 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Wnt/Frizzled (Fz) signaling controls cell polarity/movements during vertebrate gastrulation via incompletely defined mechanisms. We demonstrated previously that Wnt/Fz activation of Rho, a GTPase and regulator of cytoskeletal architecture, is essential for vertebrate gastrulation. Here we report that in mammalian cells and Xenopus embryos, Wnt/Fz signaling coactivates Rho and Rac, another GTPase and distinct regulator of cytoskeletal architecture. Wnt/Fz activation of Rac is independent of Rho and mediates Wnt/Fz activation of Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). Dishevelled (Dvl), a cytoplasmic protein downstream of Fz, forms a Wnt-induced complex with Rac independent of the Wnt-induced Dvl-Rho complex. Depletion or inhibition of Rac function perturbs Xenopus gastrulation without affecting Wnt/Fz activation of the Rho or beta-catenin pathway. We propose that parallel activation of Rac and Rho pathways by Wnt/Fz signaling is required for cell polarity and movements during vertebrate gastrulation.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/51cee3f7475d0a14d6056db86820ed9b48c83a21

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Biology

1. Lorenza Ciani
2. P. Salinas

Citations in the corpus

• Signalling in neural development: WNTS in the vertebrate nervous system: from patterning to neuronal connectivity (2005, background): “In vertebrates, DVL can signal through both Rho and Rac1 (another small GTPase) to regulate convergent extension movements during gastrulatio”