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General Comment |
The Wnt genes, encoding structurally-related secreted glycoproteins, are implicated in mammary carcinogenesis induced by mouse mammary tumor virus. In search of the Wnt gene(s) expressed in human gastric cancer, a WTGC1 cDNA fragment sharing 66.9% amino-acid homology with human and mouse Wnt-2 was isolated by degenerate polymerase chain reaction (Katoh et al., 1996). The human gene corresponding to WTGC1 was designated as Wnt-13 (or Wnt-2B) and overlapping Wnt-13 cDNAs were cloned. Nucleotide sequence analysis indicated that the Wnt-13 gene encodes the protein of 372 amino acids, including a signal peptide, two potential N-glycosylation sites and 24 cysteine residues highly conserved among members of the Wnt gene family.
NCBI Summary:
This gene encodes a member of the wingless-type MMTV integration site (WNT) family of highly conserved, secreted signaling factors. WNT family members function in a variety of developmental processes including regulation of cell growth and differentiation and are characterized by a WNT-core domain. This gene may play a role in human development as well as human carcinogenesis. This gene produces two alternative transcript variants.
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Comment |
Transcriptome profiling of the theca interna in transition from small to large antral ovarian follicles. Hatzirodos N 2014 et al.
The theca interna layer of the ovarian follicle forms during the antral stage of follicle development and lies adjacent to and directly outside the follicular basal lamina. It supplies androgens and communicates with the granulosa cells and the oocyte by extracellular signaling. To better understand developmental changes in the theca interna, we undertook transcriptome profiling of the theca interna from small (3-5 mm, n?=?10) and large (9-12 mm, n?=?5) healthy antral bovine follicles, representing a calculated >7-fold increase in the amount of thecal tissue. Principal Component Analysis and hierarchical classification of the signal intensity plots for the arrays showed no clustering of the theca interna samples into groups depending on follicle size or subcategories of small follicles. From the over 23,000 probe sets analysed, only 76 were differentially expressed between large and small healthy follicles. Some of the differentially expressed genes were associated with processes such as myoblast differentiation, protein ubiquitination, nitric oxide and transforming growth factor signaling. The most significant pathway affected from our analyses was found to be Wnt signaling, which was suppressed in large follicles via down-regulation of WNT2B and up-regulation of the inhibitor FRZB. These changes in the transcriptional profile could have been due to changes in cellular function or alternatively since the theca interna is composed of a number of different cell types it could have been due to any systematic change in the volume density of any particular cell type. However, our study suggests that the transcriptional profile of the theca interna is relatively stable during antral follicle development unlike that of granulosa cells observed previously. Thus both the cellular composition and cellular behavior of the theca interna and its contribution to follicular development appear to be relatively constant throughout the follicle growth phase examined.
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The Wnt-13 (or WNT-2B) mRNA of 2.5 kb in size was detected in heart, brain, placenta, lung, prostate, testis, ovary, small intestine and colon of adult human (Katoh et al., 1996).
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