title: Restriction of BMP4 activity domains in the developing neural tube of the mouse embryo.
abstract: Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signals pattern the dorsal neural tube, defining distinct neuronal progenitor cell domains along the dorsoventral axis of the developing spinal cord. These dorsally expressed BMPs appear to have a limited range of action. The mechanisms that regulate this range of action are unclear. We created a GAL4/UAS bigenic mouse system to overexpress BMP4 or a mutant form of BMP4 (mutBMP4), which lacks a subset of amino-terminal basic amino acids that limits its range of action, in the dorsal neural tube. UAS-Bmp4 and UAS-mutBmp4 responder genes were activated in the dorsal neural tube by a Wnt1-GAL4 transgene. Analysis of the spinal cords of bigenic embryos that expressed comparable levels of transgenic transcripts revealed that mutBMP4 acted more ventrally in the neural tube than BMP4. This suggests that the amino-terminal basic amino-acid motif of mature BMP4 controls long-range activity for dorsoventral patterning of the vertebrate neural tube.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Qiyong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Naoto
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ueno
authors.forename: Richard R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Behringer
mesh_terms: D020816:Amino Acid Motifs; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D019521:Body Patterning; D055415:Bone Morphogenetic Protein 4; D019485:Bone Morphogenetic Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000502:physiology*; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000378:metabolism; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D005838:Genotype; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D017403:In Situ Hybridization; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009432:Neural Crest / Q000196:embryology*; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000378:metabolism; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000196:embryology; D019076:Transgenes
chemical_list: C525810:Bmp4 protein, mouse; D055415:Bone Morphogenetic Protein 4; D019485:Bone Morphogenetic Proteins; D012333:RNA, Messenger