Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Biological Chemistry University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1662, USA.
Curr Biol. 2010 Feb 9;20(3):R89-92. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.021.
In the developing organism, cells differentiate, divide and die as part of groups of hundreds or thousands of cells called 'morphogenetic fields'. Fields have the remarkable property of self-regulation: for example, if the forelimb field is bisected, each half can give rise to a complete limb after transplantation, as discovered by Ross Harrison in 1918. Therefore, cells in the morphogenetic field are capable of long-range communication with each other in order to ascertain their position [1]. This positional information is relayed in the extracellular space in the form of concentration gradients of specific classes of extracellular molecules called 'morphogens' that trigger cellular responses by binding and activating cell surface receptors. Here, we focus on a family of morphogens called 'Bone Morphogenetic Proteins' (BMPs), which has provided a new paradigm for signaling regulation in the extracellular space.
在发育中的生物体中，细胞会分化、分裂和死亡，形成数百或数千个细胞组成的称为“形态发生场”的群体。这些场具有自我调节的显著特性：例如，如果将前肢场一分为二，每个半体在移植后都可以形成完整的肢体，这是 Ross Harrison 在 1918 年发现的。因此，形态发生场中的细胞能够进行长距离的相互通讯，以确定它们的位置[1]。这种位置信息以特定类别的细胞外分子（称为“形态发生素”）的浓度梯度的形式在细胞外空间中传递，这些分子通过与细胞表面受体结合并激活它们来触发细胞反应。在这里，我们专注于一类称为“骨形态发生蛋白”（BMPs）的形态发生素，它们为细胞外空间中的信号调节提供了一个新的范例。
