PUBLICATION
Wnt4 is not sufficient to induce lobuloalveolar mammary development
- Authors
- Kim, Y.C., Clark, R.J., Pelegri, F., and Alexander, C.M.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-091120-4
- Date
- 2009
- Source
- BMC Developmental Biology 9: 55 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Pelegri, Francisco
- Keywords
- none
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Blotting, Southern
- Blotting, Western
- Doxycycline/pharmacology
- Female
- Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental/drug effects
- Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental/genetics
- Luciferases/genetics
- Luciferases/metabolism
- Male
- Mammary Glands, Animal/growth & development*
- Mammary Glands, Animal/metabolism*
- Mice
- Mice, Mutant Strains
- Mice, Transgenic
- Polymerase Chain Reaction
- Pregnancy
- Tetracyclines/pharmacology
- Wnt Proteins/genetics
- Wnt Proteins/metabolism
- Wnt Proteins/physiology*
- Wnt4 Protein
- PubMed
- 19878558 Full text @ BMC Dev. Biol.
Citation
Kim, Y.C., Clark, R.J., Pelegri, F., and Alexander, C.M. (2009) Wnt4 is not sufficient to induce lobuloalveolar mammary development. BMC Developmental Biology. 9:55.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Brisken et al (2000) showed that Wnt4 null mammary glands were deficient in early lobuloalveolar mammary outgrowth during pregnancy, and implicated Wnt4 as an effector for the progesterone-induced mammary growth program. Though ectopic Wnt1 signaling is known to be mitogenic and oncogenic, no endogenously expressed Wnt ligands have ever been directly implicated in mammary growth and morphogenesis. Therefore, we generated conditional transgenic mice to test whether Wnt4 can stimulate mammary epithelial cell growth. RESULTS: We found that despite pregnancy-associated expression levels of Wnt4, mammary glands did not display the side-branching typical of early pregnancy. Control experiments designed to test the Wnt4 construct in zebrafish reproduced other studies that demonstrated Wnt4-specific phenotypes distinct from Wnt1-induced phenotypes. Indeed, using qPCR-based array analyses, we found that a specific transcriptional target of Wnt4, namely Wnt16, was induced in Wnt4-expressing transgenic glands, to levels equivalent to that of early pregnant glands. CONCLUSION: Taken together, we propose that Wnt4 is necessary, but not sufficient, to induce side-branch development.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping