High impact information on Sox-2

• Blocking either Xfz5 or canonical Wnt signaling within the developing retina inhibits Sox2 expression, reduces cell proliferation, inhibits the onset of proneural gene expression, and biases individual progenitors toward a nonneural fate, without altering the expression of multiple progenitor markers [1].
• For example, more than half of the embryos prepared from transplanted neuroectoderm nuclei overexpressed the neuroectodermal marker gene Sox2 to an excessive level in their endoderm cells [2].
• Attenuation of FoxD3-related signaling by a dominant-negative FoxD3 construct (FoxD3delN) inhibits neural crest differentiation in vivo without suppressing the CNS marker Sox2 [3].
• In this report, we show that Sox2 function is required for neural differentiation of early Xenopus ectoderm [4].
• Attenuation of Sox2 function both from the late blastula stage and from the late gastrula stage onwards causes an inhibition of neural differentiation in animal caps and in whole embryos [4].

Anatomical context of Sox-2

• Thus, Zic-r1 acts in the pathway bridging the neural inducer with the downstream proneural genes, while Sox-2 makes the ectoderm responsive to extracellular signals, demonstrating that the early phase of neural induction involves simultaneous activation of multiple functions [5].

References