Role of Wnt signaling during cardiac development / 军事医学

ABSTRACT

Understanding heart development at a molecular level is a prerequisite for uncovering the causes of congenital heart diseases .Such knowledge can also greatly benefit therapeutic approaches that try to enhance cardiac regeneration or that involve the differentiation of resident cardiac progenitor cells .Wnt proteins have been shown to play multiple roles dur-ing cardiac development .They are extracellular growth factors that activate different intracellular signaling branches .Here, we summarize our current understanding of how these factors affect different aspects of cardiogenesis , from early specifica-tion of cardiac progenitors to later developmental steps , such as remodeling processes .