(Credit: pixabay)
By studying the development of the blood vessels of the brain, researchers at Université libre de Bruxelles have just shed light on a question that was pending for 10 years! They provide a molecular mechanism conferring ligand specificity to Wnt signaling, an ancestral communication pathway present in all vertebrates. Their research is published in Science. Led by Benoit Vanhollebeke, WELBIO investigator at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the Laboratory of Neurovascular Signaling (ULB's Faculty of Sciences and ULB Neuroscience Institute) has solved an important enigma of cell signaling related to Wnt signaling specificity. Wnt is ancient pathway, whose evolutionary appearance dates back to the emergence of multicellular animals. It plays pivotal roles in cell to cell communication and governs several aspects of embryonic development and tissue homeostasis. When dysfunctional, Wnt signaling can be at the origin of many diseases, in particular several cancers. With 10 receptors and 19 ligands, recognizing each other, the complexity of the pathway seemed dizzying.
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