Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Secreted cytokines of the TGFβ family are found in all multicellular organisms and implicated in regulating fundamental cell behaviors such as proliferation, differentiation, migration and survival. Signal transduction involves complexes of specific type I and II receptor kinases that induce the nuclear translocation of Smad transcription factors t...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Establishing and maintaining cell fate in the right place at the right time is a key requirement for normal tissue maintenance. Stem cells are at the core of this process. Understanding how stem cells balance self-renewal and production of differentiating cells is key for understanding the defects that underpin many diseases. Both, external cues fr...
Published in Seminars in cell & developmental biology
Canonical Hedgehog (HH) signaling leads to the regulation of the GLI code: the sum of all positive and negative functions of all GLI proteins. In humans, the three GLI factors encode context-dependent activities with GLI1 being mostly an activator and GLI3 often a repressor. Modulation of GLI activity occurs at multiple levels, including by co-fact...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Alternative splicing emerges as a potent and pervasive mechanism of gene expression regulation that expands the coding capacity of the genome and forms an intermediate layer of regulation between transcriptional and post-translational networks. Indeed, alternative splicing occupies a pivotal position in developmental programs and in the cell respon...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Here we review recent findings showing that chromatin organization adds another layer of complexity to the already intricate network of splicing regulatory mechanisms. Chromatin structure can impact splicing by either affecting the elongation rate of RNA polymerase II or by signaling the recruitment of splicing regulatory proteins. The C-terminal d...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Serine–arginine rich splicing factors (SR proteins) are a family of RNA binding proteins that are essential for development in various model organisms. Although SR proteins are necessary for pre-mRNA splicing in metazoans, their binding is not limited to pre-RNA. SR proteins associate with various classes of RNAs, including intronless transcripts a...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Amphiregulin (AREG) is a ligand of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a widely expressed transmembrane tyrosine kinase. AREG is synthesized as a membrane-anchored precursor protein that can engage in juxtacrine signaling on adjacent cells. Alternatively, after proteolytic processing by cell membrane proteases, mainly TACE/ADAM17, AREG is ...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Organs like the vertebrate vascular system and the insect tracheal system develop from separate primordia that undergo fusion events to form interconnected tubular networks. Although the correct pattern of tubular connections (anastomoses) in these organs is crucial for their normal function, the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern tube f...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Minichromsome maintenance protein 10 (Mcm10) is an essential replication factor that is required for the activation of the Cdc45:Mcm2-7:GINS helicase. Mcm10's ability to bind both ds and ssDNA appears vital for this function. In addition, Mcm10 interacts with multiple players at the replication fork, including DNA polymerase-α and proliferating cel...
Published in Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology
Testosterone is essential for maintaining spermatogenesis and male fertility. However, the molecular mechanisms by which testosterone acts have not begun to be revealed until recently. With the advances obtained from the use of transgenic mice lacking or overexpressing the androgen receptor, the cell specific targets of testosterone action as well ...
