Hedgehog's Patterning Call Is Patched Through, Smoothly

摘要

In the parlor game Telephone, Alice whispers something to Bob, who transmits it to Carol, and so forth until a hilariously skewed message emerges at the far end of the chain. Cells in a developing embryo trade news that shapes their fates in much thesame way, with extracellular growth factors, cell-surface receptors, and intracellular courier molecules acting as go-betweens. But in one important kind of phone call between cells, involving the powerful Hedgehog (Hh) family of pattern-forming proteins, a key party has long been hidden--the receptor on the cell surface. As a result, researchers couldn't tell where the message went after reaching the cell or why it is sometimes dangerously distorted, spurring cancerous cell proliferation.