Eric T Hall, Miriam E Dillard, Elizabeth R Cleverdon, Yan Zhang, Christina A Daly, Shariq S Ansari, Randall Wakefield, Daniel P Stewart, Shondra M Pruett-Miller, Alfonso Lavado, Alex F Carisey, Amanda Johnson, Yong-Dong Wang, Emma Selner, Michael Tanes, Young Sang Ryu, Camenzind G Robinson, Jeffrey Steinberg, Stacey K Ogden
During development, morphogens pattern tissues by instructing cell fate across long distances. Directly visualizing morphogen transport in situ has been inaccessible, so the molecular mechanisms ensuring successful morphogen delivery remain unclear. To tackle this longstanding problem, we developed a mouse model for compromised sonic hedgehog (SHH) morphogen delivery and discovered that endocytic recycling promotes SHH loading into signaling filopodia called cytonemes. We optimized methods to preserve in vivo cytonemes for advanced microscopy and show endogenous SHH localized to cytonemes in developing mouse neural tubes...
December 28, 2023: Cell