Hedgehog acts as a somatic stem cell factor in the Drosophila ovary

Yan Zhang and Daniel Kalderon ()
Additional contact information
Yan Zhang: Columbia University
Daniel Kalderon: Columbia University

Nature, 2001, vol. 410, issue 6828, 599-604

Abstract: Abstract Secreted signalling molecules of the Hedgehog (Hh) family have many essential patterning roles during development of diverse organisms including Drosophila and humans1,2. Although Hedgehog proteins most commonly affect cell fate, they can also stimulate cell proliferation. In humans several distinctive cancers, including basal-cell carcinoma, result from mutations that aberrantly activate Hh signal transduction3. In Drosophila, Hh directly stimulates proliferation of ovarian somatic cells4,5,6. Here we show that Hh acts specifically on stem cells in the Drosophila ovary. These cells cannot proliferate as stem cells in the absence of Hh signalling, whereas excessive Hh signalling produces supernumerary stem cells. We deduce that Hh is a stem-cell factor and suggest that human cancers due to excessive Hh signalling might result from aberrant expansion of stem cell pools.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35069099 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:410:y:2001:i:6828:d:10.1038_35069099

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35069099

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().