| First Author | Reid BS | Year | 2011 |
| Journal | Dev Biol | Volume | 349 |
| Issue | 2 | Pages | 261-9 |
| PubMed ID | 21087601 | Mgi Jnum | J:168016 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:4881604 | Doi | 10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.11.012 |
| Citation | Reid BS, et al. (2011) Ectodermal Wnt/beta-catenin signaling shapes the mouse face. Dev Biol 349(2):261-9 |
| abstractText | The canonical Wnt/beta-catenin pathway is an essential component of multiple developmental processes. To investigate the role of this pathway in the ectoderm during facial morphogenesis, we generated conditional beta-catenin mouse mutants using a novel ectoderm-specific Cre recombinase transgenic line. Our results demonstrate that ablating or stabilizing beta-catenin in the embryonic ectoderm causes dramatic changes in facial morphology. There are accompanying alterations in the expression of Fgf8 and Shh, key molecules that establish a signaling center critical for facial patterning, the frontonasal ectodermal zone (FEZ). These data indicate that Wnt/beta-catenin signaling within the ectoderm is critical for facial development and further suggest that this pathway is an important mechanism for generating the diverse facial shapes of vertebrates during evolution. |
