Wnt Signaling: Multiple Pathways, Multiple Receptors, and Multiple Transcription Factors*

By M. D. Gordon, R. Nusse. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2006

1,408 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Signaling pathways are an ever present force in every animal’s life. During development, these pathways provide critical cell-cell communication required to coordinate the activities of vast numbers of cells. In adulthood, similar communication mechanisms are utilized to achieve tissue homeostasis and regeneration. Regulation of signaling is crucial; too much or too little activity from a given signal transduction pathway can cause devastating results such as developmental defects or, later in life, disease. The Wnts comprise a large family of highly conserved growth factors that are responsible for important developmental and homeostatic processes throughout the animal kingdom (for a more comprehensive review see Ref. 1). Their implication in a wide array of developmental events and human diseases has made Wnts and their signaling pathways the subject of intense investigation over the last two decades. This has never been truer than in the past few years, when the association of Wnt signaling with stem cell fate has added fuel to an already active field. Membership in the Wnt family is defined by amino acid sequence rather than functional properties. It is therefore not too surprising that Wnts have been associated with a number of different activities and downstream signaling pathways. Although the majority of work in the field to date has focused on -catenin-dependent, or canonical, Wnt signaling, examples continue to accumulate in which Wnts and/or other key components of the canonical signaling cascade participate in -catenin-independent processes (reviewed in Ref. 2). In this review, we will focus largely on the canonical pathway, paying particular attention to recent insights. We will then touch on some developments in -catenin-independent signaling and discuss some issues that may be important to all Wnts, regardless of the signal they generate.

Subfields: Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fdc71323543de495ede03a9988a8547483b61a2

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In Molecular Biology

1. J. Avruch
2. D. Lacey
3. Andrea Augello
4. C. De Bari
5. W. S. Simonet
6. J. Kyriakis
7. P. Kostenuik
8. J. Blenis

Citations in the corpus

• Mammalian MAPK signal transduction pathways activated by stress and inflammation: a 10-year update. (2012, background): “This stabilization requires signal-dependent inhibition of GSK3catalyzed phosphorylation of -catenin and enables -catenin to accumulate and migrate to the nucleus where it dimerizes with TCF transcription factors to regulate gene expression (99).”
• The Regulation of Differentiation in Mesenchymal Stem Cells (2010, positive): “Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the canonical b -catenin-dependent Wnt signaling pathway (for a comprehensive review see Gordon and Nusse, 2006).”
• Temporal control of neural crest lineage generation by Wnt/beta-catenin signaling (2012, background): “Canonical Wnt signaling involves the intracellular signaling component -catenin, which, upon activation, translocates to the nucleus and induces specific transcriptional responses (Gordon and Nusse, 2006).”
• Sclerostin Antibody Treatment Increases Bone Formation, Bone Mass, and Bone Strength in a Rat Model of Postmenopausal Osteoporosis (2009, background): “For instance, it is not known which of the many identified Wnt-signaling ligands and Wnt-signaling receptors((42)) might be critical components of this bone anabolic pathway.”