FGF receptor signaling in early development

One of the main interests of our group is understanding the molecular events responsible for mesoderm formation and patterning. In particular we are investigating the role of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signalling during mesoderm formation (Figure 1) in the frog, Xenopus (Amaya et al 1991; Amaya et al 1993; Kroll & Amaya 1996). We have shown that inhibiting FGF signalling during gastrulation disrupts mesoderm specification and morphogenesis. In order to better understand these processes, we have begun to isolate downstream targets of FGF signalling. We have identified Xsprouty2 as an important target gene (Nutt et al, 2001) (Figure 2). This protein and the related proteins, Xsprouty1, Xspred1 and Xspred2 are both targets and modulators of FGF signaling. We have recently shown that the Sprouty and Spred proteins play an important role in FGF signal interpretation, allowing mesoderm specification and morphogenesis to occur in a coordinate fashion (Sivak et al, 2005).

Fig. 1   Fig. 2