No 18/September 15, 2005
To Build a Tongue
MDC Scientists gain new insights into Muscle Development in Embryos
Tongue of a mouse embryo. The arrows point to the muscle cells of the tongue that have been labeled in green and red. Two genes steer the development of the tongue from wandering muscle precursor cells. Proper tongue development requires that both genes are functional. (Photo: Elena Vasyutina/ MDC)
What do the tongue, arm, and leg muscles have in common? They
all evolve from wandering cells and two different genes steer their
development. Elena Vasyutina and Prof. Carmen Birchmeier have published these
new findings in mice and chicken embryos, in the journal Genes and Development* (www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.346205).
Muscular precursor cells derive from the somite, a segmented structure which
exists in vertebrates during embryogenesis. These precursor cells can unchain
themselves from their neighbouring cells at a specific point in time and wander
to a specific point in the connective tissue, where the muscle of the tongue
and the muscles of the arms and legs normally develop. Two different genes in
the muscle precursor cells control this process. One gene expresses the CXCR4
receptor, a molecule which recognizes a messenger molecule (chemokine), the
second gene expresses what scientists call tyrosine kinase receptor c-Met. Both
genes act as chaperones of the wandering muscle precursor cells and ensure that
such cells reach their destination, the result of which is normal muscle
formation. Wandering processes during embryogenesis often resemble processes
during cancer development. Indeed, both receptors, CXCR4 and met, play a role
in the development of metastasis in breast and bowl cancer, two diseases that
likewise exist of wandering cells.
*CXCR4 and Gab1 cooperate to control
the development of migrating muscle progenitor cells Elena Vasyutina1, Jürg Stebler2,
Beate Brand-Saberi3, Stefan Schulz4, Erez Raz2,
and Carmen Birchmeier1,5 1Max Delbrueck Center for
Molecular Medicine, 13125 Berlin-Buch, Germany; 2Max Planck
Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, 37077 Göttingen, Germany; 3Institute
of Anatomy and Cell Biology II, University of Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg,
Germany; 4Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology,
Otto-von-Guericke University, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany 5Corresponding author. E-MAIL: cbirch@mdc-berlin.de, FAX 49-30-94
06 – 37 65
Barbara Bachtler
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