Abstract
Eph receptors and their membrane-tethered ligands have important functions in development. Trans interactions of Eph receptors with ephrins at cell-cell interfaces promote a variety of cellular responses, including repulsion, attraction and migration. Eph-ephrin signalling can be bi-directional and controls actin cytoskeleton dynamics, thereby leading to changes in cellular shape. This article provides an overview of the general structures and signalling mechanisms, and of typical developmental functions along with cell biological principles.
Highlights
Morphogenesis in the embryo requires coordinated cell behaviour, which is stimulated by cues from the cells’ environment that are generated as a result of patterning processes in early development
Eph receptors lie functionally at the interface between pattern formation and morphogenesis. They are expressed in all germ layers and are required for: cell segregation and positioning; tissue boundary formation and segmentation; cell migration, axon guidance and topographic mapping; and vascular and skeletal morphogenesis
Eph receptors constitute the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs)
Summary
Morphogenesis in the embryo requires coordinated cell behaviour, which is stimulated by cues from the cells’ environment that are generated as a result of patterning processes in early development. Eph and ephrin proteins interact with a number of other ligand/receptor systems to influence how cells translate environmental signals to orchestrate morphogenetic events. Ephrin B3 phosphorylation-dependent reverse signalling in neurons via the adaptor protein Nck2/Grb4, p21 activating kinase (Pak1), RacGEF Dock180 and Rac1 promotes the pruning of specific axon bundles in the postnatal hippocampus (Xu and Henkemeyer, 2009).
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