Abstract
IN Drosophila the amount of neurogenic ectoderm, from which the central nervous system (CNS) derives, is regulated by a dorsal-ventral system of positional information in which two secreted molecules of antagonistic functions, decapentaplegic (dpp) and short-gastrulation (sog), play fundamental roles1-4. The vertebrate homologue of dpp is either bmp-4 or bmp-2 (ref. 5), and the homologue of sog is chd 4,6,7 (s-chordin). In Xenopus the CNS is induced by signals emanating from the organizer8, and two proteins secreted by the organizer, noggin9 and follistatin10, have been shown to induce neural tissue in animal-cap assays. Here we report that Chd, another organizer-specific secreted factor6, has neuralizing activity and that this activity can be antagonized by Bmp-4. Inhibition of the function of the endogenous Bmp-4 present in the animal cap11 also leads to neural differentiation. We suggest that conserved molecular mechanisms involving chd/sog and bmp-4/fdpp gene products pattern the ectoderm in Xenopus and in Drosophila.
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Change history
01 November 1995
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/378419d0
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Sasai, Y., Lu, B., Steinbeisser, H. et al. Regulation of neural induction by the Chd and Bmp-4 antagonistic patterning signals in Xenopus. Nature 376, 333–336 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1038/376333a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/376333a0
