Wingless is known to be required for induction of cardiac mesoderm in Drosophila, but the function of Wnt family proteins, vertebrate homologues of wingless, in cardiac myocytes remains unknown. When medium conditioned by HEK293 cells overexpressing Wnt-3a or -5a was applied to cultured neonatal cardiac myocytes, Wnt proteins induced myocyte aggregation in the presence of fibroblasts, concomitant with increases in beta-catenin and N-cadherin in the myocytes and with E- and M-cadherins in the fibroblasts. The aggregation was inhibited by anti-N-cadherin antibody and induced by constitutively active beta-catenin, but was unaffected by dominant negative and dominant positive T cell factor (TCF) mutants. Thus, increased stabilization of complexed cadherin-beta-catenin in both cell types appears crucial for the morphological effect of Wnt on cardiac myocytes. Furthermore, myocytes overexpressing a dominant negative frizzled-2, but not a dominant negative frizzled-4, failed to aggregate in response to Wnt, indicating frizzled-2 to be the predominant receptor mediating aggregation. By contrast, analysis of bromodeoxyuridine incorporation and transcription of various cardiogenetic markers showed Wnt to have little or no impact on cell proliferation or differentiation. These findings suggest that a Wnt-frizzled-2 signaling pathway is centrally involved in the morphological arrangement of cardiac myocytes in neonatal heart through stabilization of complexed cadherin- beta-catenin.
Pubmed ID: 10893270 RIS Download
Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.
Antibody and density gradient media supplier.
View all literature mentionsA freeware Macintosh program for simulating and testing polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) that can also be used as a tool for designing primers by evaluating candidates. It's a program to simulate the polymerase chain reaction. You specify a target sequence and primers, and it predicts the result. It's useful for planning experiments, testing primers and teaching about PCR. Amplify draws a diagram of the predicted results showing all expected primer matches and amplified fragments. Clicking on any of these objects gives additional information about them.
View all literature mentionsCell line C2C12 is a Spontaneously immortalized cell line with a species of origin Mus musculus (Mouse)
View all literature mentionsCell line HEK293 is a Transformed cell line with a species of origin Homo sapiens (Human)
View all literature mentions