Mechanisms of intercellular Wnt transport
By D. Routledge, Steffen Scholpp. 2019
143 citations recorded by the source corpus.
ABSTRACT Wnt proteins are secreted glycoproteins that regulate multiple processes crucial to the development and tissue homeostasis of multicellular organisms, including tissue patterning, proliferation, cell fate specification, cell polarity and migration. To elicit these effects, Wnts act as autocrine as well as paracrine signalling molecules between Wnt-producing and Wnt-receiving cells. More than 40 years after the discovery of the Wg/Wnt pathway, it is still unclear how they are transported to fulfil their paracrine signalling functions. Several mechanisms have been proposed to mediate intercellular Wnt transport, including Wnt-binding proteins, lipoproteins, exosomes and cytonemes. In this Review, we describe the evidence for each proposed mechanism, and discuss how they may contribute to Wnt dispersal in tissue-specific and context-dependent manners, to regulate embryonic development precisely and maintain the internal steady state within a defined tissue. Summary: This Review describes the trafficking mechanisms proposed to mediate the extracellular transport of Wnt proteins and discusses how they contribute to Wnt dispersal.
Subfields: Molecular Biology
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
Citations in the corpus
- Structural basis of WLS/Evi-mediated Wnt transport and secretion (2020, background): “The Wnt-WLS complex may transfer Wnts to cell surface proteoglycans, to soluble transport proteins, to cytonemes, or to exosomes (McGough et al., 2020; Routledge and Scholpp, 2019).”