Tectonic, a novel regulator of the Hedgehog pathway required for both activation and inhibition

Jeremy F. Reiter; William C. Skarnes

doi:10.1101/gad.1363606

Tectonic, a novel regulator of the Hedgehog pathway required for both activation and inhibition

Jeremy F. Reiter1,4 and
William C. Skarnes2,3

¹Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, and Diabetes Center, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-0525, USA; ²Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Abstract

We report the identification of a novel protein that participates in Hedgehog-mediated patterning of the neural tube. This protein, named Tectonic, is the founding member of a previously undescribed family of evolutionarily conserved secreted and transmembrane proteins. During neural tube development, mouse Tectonic is required for formation of the most ventral cell types and for full Hedgehog (Hh) pathway activation. Epistasis analyses reveal that Tectonic modulates Hh signal transduction downstream of Smoothened (Smo) and Rab23. Interestingly, characterization of Tectonic Shh and Tectonic Smo double mutants indicates that Tectonic plays an additional role in repressing Hh pathway activity.

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Footnotes

Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.
Article published online ahead of print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1363606.
↵4 Corresponding author.

↵4 E-MAIL jreiter{at}diabetes.ucsf.edu; FAX (415) 514-2346.
↵3 Present address: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, United Kingdom.
- Accepted November 2, 2005.
- Received August 9, 2005.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press