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The multiple activities of BMPs during spinal cord development

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Abstract

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are one of the main classes of multi-faceted secreted factors that drive vertebrate development. A growing body of evidence indicates that BMPs contribute to the formation of the central nervous system throughout its development, from the initial shaping of the neural primordium to the generation and maturation of the different cell types that form the functional adult nervous tissue. In this review, we focus on the multiple activities of BMPs during spinal cord development, paying particular attention to recent results that highlight the complexity of BMP signaling during this process. These findings emphasize the unique capacity of these signals to mediate various functions in the same tissue throughout development, recruiting diverse effectors and strategies to instruct their target cells.

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Acknowledgments

Work in EM’s laboratory was supported by Grants BFU2010-18959 and CSD2007-00008.

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  1. Instituto de Biología Molecular de Barcelona, CSIC, Parc Científic de Barcelona, C/Baldiri i Reixac 10-15, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Gwenvael Le Dréau & Elisa Martí

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  1. Gwenvael Le Dréau
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  2. Elisa Martí
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Correspondence to Gwenvael Le Dréau or Elisa Martí.

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Le Dréau, G., Martí, E. The multiple activities of BMPs during spinal cord development. Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 70, 4293–4305 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-013-1354-9

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