Open AccessWnt signaling pathway and the Evo-Devo of deuterostome axis
Author(s) -
Germany Qian,
Yiquan Wang
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
yichuan
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.125
H-Index - 16
ISSN - 0253-9772
DOI - 10.3724/sp.j.1005.2011.00684
Subject(s) - wnt signaling pathway , biology , body plan , zebrafish , microbiology and biotechnology , signal transduction , transcription factor , gene , sea urchin , genetics , evolutionary developmental biology , evolutionary biology
A series of signal transduction pathways have been found to regulate the polarity establishment and formation of animal primary body axis. Among them, Wnt signaling pathway is extremely conserved and several key components in the pathway have been identified in the demosponge lineage. This implies that it is one of the earliest pathways involved in the ancestral metazoan axis development and might play an important role in specification and development of posterior and ventral fate of animal axis. Recently, with the establishment of functional experiments in vitro, the body plan formation has been found to be affected, in varying degrees, by many genes in the Wnt signaling pathway, such as members of wnt gene family, maternal gene beta-catenin and some transcription factor encoding genes. In this review, we analyzed the evolutionary origin of the wnt gene family involved in development of metazoan body plans, and then made a brief review on the roles of canonical Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in the polarity establishment and formation of primary body axis in diverse deuterostomes including sea urchin, amphioxus, zebrafish, frog, and mouse.