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[Progress on Hedgehog signaling transduction.] [Article in Chinese]

TANG Ying, CHENG Steven^*

Central Laboratory, the First People’s Hospital of Wujiang District, Suzhou 215200, China； Department of Developmental Genetics, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China

Abstract

Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway plays an important role during embryonic development and pattern formation. Disruption of Hh pathway results in various developmental disorders and increasing cancer incidence. Here we provide a comprehensive review of the pathway members, focusing on how mammalian Hh regulates the Gli family of transcription factors through its downstream members, the so-called "canonical signaling pathway". Hh signaling pathway is highly conserved among species, and primary cilia plays an important role as a "signaling center" during vertebrate signal transduction. Further, in the past few years, numerous studies have shown that Hh signal can also be transduced through Gli-independent ways collectively referred to as "non-canonical signaling pathways", which can be subdivided into two modules: (i) those not requiring Smo and (ii) those downstream of Smo that do not require Gli transcription factors. Thus, we review the rapid progress on canonical and non-canonical Hh pathways.

Key words: Hedgehog signaling pathway; canonical pathway; non-canonical pathway

Received: 2013-11-29　　Accepted: 2014-01-07

Corresponding author: 程雁　　E-mail: sycheng@njmu.edu.cn

Citing This Article：

TANG Ying, CHENG Steven. [Progress on Hedgehog signaling transduction.] [Article in Chinese]. Acta Physiol Sin 2014; 66 (4): 415-422 (in Chinese with English abstract).