Nasevicius A, Hyatt T, Kim H, Guttman J, Walsh E, Sumanas S, Wang Y, Ekker S C
Department of Biochemistry and Institute of Human Genetics, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
Development. 1998 Nov;125(21):4283-92. doi: 10.1242/dev.125.21.4283.
We have used zebrafish as a model system for the study of vertebrate dorsoventral patterning. We isolated a maternally expressed and dorsal organizer localized member of the frizzled family of wnt receptors. Wild-type and dominant, loss-of-function molecules in misexpression studies demonstrate frizzled function is necessary and sufficient for dorsal mesoderm specification. frizzled activity is antagonized by the action of GSK-3, and we show GSK-3 is also required for zebrafish dorsal mesoderm formation. frizzled cooperatively interacts with the maternally encoded zebrafish wnt8 protein in dorsal mesodermal fate determination. This frizzled -mediated wnt pathway for dorsal mesoderm specification provides the first evidence for the requirement of a wnt-like signal in vertebrate axis determination.
