Journal Home Online First Current Issue Archive For Authors Journal Information 中文版

Frontiers of Medicine >> 2014, Volume 8, Issue 1 doi: 10.1007/s11684-014-0308-4

Genetic evidence in planar cell polarity signaling pathway in human neural tube defects

1. Department of Surgery, Tianjin Children’s Hospital, Tianjin 300074, China; 2. School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300070, China

Available online: 2014-04-26

Next Previous

Abstract

Neural tube defects (NTDs) are a group of birth anomalies having a profound physical, emotional, and financial effects on families and communities. Their etiology is complex, involving environmental and genetic factors that interact to modulate the incidence and severity of the developing phenotype. The planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway controls the process of convergent extension (CE) during gastrulation and neural tube closure and has been implicated in the pathogenesis of NTDs in animal models and human cohorts. This review summarizes the cumulative results of recent studies on PCP signaling pathway and human NTDs. These results demonstrate that PCP gene alterations contribute to the etiology of human NTDs.

Related Research