BACKGROUND Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling plays a crucial role in growth and patterning during embryonic development, and also in stem cell maintenance and tissue regeneration in adults. Aberrant Shh pathway activation is involved in the development of many tumors, and one of the most affected Shh signaling steps found in these tumors is the regulation of the signaling receptor Smoothened by th...

Small-molecule inhibition of extracellular proteins that activate membrane receptors has proven to be extremely challenging. Diversity-oriented synthesis and small-molecule microarrays enabled the discovery of robotnikinin, a small molecule that binds the extracellular Sonic hedgehog (Shh) protein and blocks Shh signaling in cell lines, human primary keratinocytes and a synthetic model of human...

Sonic hedgehog (SHH) plays an important role in postnatal tissue repair. The present study tested the hypothesis that impaired SHH pathway results in delayed wound healing by suppressing cutaneous nitric oxide (NO) function in type 1 diabetes. Adult male C57/B6 mice and streptozotocin (STZ)-induced type 1 diabetic mice were used. Although cutaneous SHH and Patched-1 (Ptc-1 encoded by PTCH, PTCH...

Sonic hedgehog (SHH) is required to generate ventral cell types throughout the central nervous system. Its role in directly specifying ventral cells, however, has recently been questioned because loss of the Shh gene has little effect on ventral development if the Gli3 gene is also mutant. Consequently, another ventral determinant must exist. Here, genetic evidence establishes that FGFs are req...

Angiostrongylus cantonensis infection may cause elevation of ROS and antioxidants in the CSF of infected mice. Astrocytes may protect the surrounding neurons from oxidative stress-induced cell death by secreting Sonic hedgehog (Shh) via the PI3-K/AKT/Bcl-2 pathway. This study was conducted to determine the role of the Shh signaling pathway in A. cantonensis-infected BABL/c mice by coculturing a...

During limb development, Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) is expressed in the posterior limb bud and is critical for the antero-posterio (AP) patterning of the limb. Gain or loss of Shh function affects patterning of limb skeletal elements, muscle, and tendons. However, it remains unknown whether Shh signalling regulates the patterning and development of these tissues in a cell-autonomous and non-cell-auto...

The development of a functional tissue requires coordination of the amplification of progenitors and their differentiation into specific cell types. The molecular basis for this coordination during myotome ontogeny is not well understood. Dermomytome progenitors that colonize the myotome first acquire myocyte identity and subsequently proliferate as Pax7-expressing progenitors before undergoing...

Taste buds are assemblies of elongated epithelial cells, which are innervated by gustatory nerves that transmit taste information to the brain stem. Taste cells are continuously renewed throughout life via proliferation of epithelial progenitors, but the molecular regulation of this process remains unknown. During embryogenesis, sonic hedgehog (SHH) negatively regulates taste bud patterning, su...

During development of the cerebellum, Sonic hedgehog (SHH) is expressed in migrating and settled Purkinje neurons and is directly responsible for proliferation of granule cell precursors in the external germinal layer. We have previously demonstrated that SHH interacts with vitronectin in the differentiation of spinal motor neurons. Here, we analysed whether similar interactions between SHH and...

The mammalian lung, like many other organs, develops by branching morphogenesis of an epithelium [1]. Development initiates with evagination of two ventral buds of foregut endoderm into the underlying splanchnic mesoderm. As the buds extend, they send out lateral branches at precise, invariant positions, establishing the primary airways and the lobes of each lung. Dichotomous branching leads to...