BD Pharmingen™ Purified Mouse Anti-Human Wnt16

The Wnt gene family comprises a large group of signaling proteins involved in developmental pathways in vertebrates, Drosophilia, C. elegans and other organisms. The Wnt genes were first discovered in mouse (called int-1) and later in Drosophilia (called wingless, or wg) where the signaling pathways were unravelled. The Wnt proteins are involved in various developmental processes including embryonic induction, generation of cell polarity and the specification of cell fate. The vertebrate Wnt glycoproteins number at least 16 members and initiate signaling by being secreted and a subset of these glycoproteins bind to a class of receptors, called Frizzled, of which 11 have been identified. Stimulation of the Wnt pathway causes the phosphorylation of Dishevelled, which inhibits glycogen synthase kinase -3β (GSK3β) and allows β-catenin to accumulate in the cytosol. β-catenin then translocates to the nucleus to form a complex with Tcf/LEF family of transcription factors to activate transcription. In unstimulated cells, β-catenin forms a complex with the proteins Axin, adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), (GSK3ß) and is unstable. Studies have shown that some members of this pathway become mutated in human cancers, such as colon carcinoma and melanoma. Futhermore, studies on the WNT-16 gene, have shown that it is activated by the E2A-Pbx fusion product in acute lymphoblastoid leukemia.  Wnt16 has a predicted molecular weight of 40 kDa (SWISS-PROT:Q9UBV4).