| The vertebrate Wnt gene family represents a large and diverse group of signaling molecules involved in the patterning, proliferation and differentiation of a variety of organs and cell types. They signal through the Frizzled family of receptors. It has become clear that secreted Wnt antagonists play important roles in regulating Wnt signaling. Members of the secreted Frizzled-related protein (the secreted Frizzled related protein, sFrp) family appear to function as soluble modulators of Wnt signaling, presumably by competing with membrane Frizzled receptors for the binding of secreted Wnt ligands. sFrps equester Wnts in the extracellular space, preventing activation of both the canonical and the planar polarity Wnt pathways.In this essay, we use mouse tooth development as a model in which overexpression of sFrp2 was performed to study its function in regulating Wnt pathway. Firstly, lentivirus vectors (three plasmids pNL-EGFP/pNL-EGFP- mES2-sFrp2, pVSVG, pHelper) were exploited to transfect 293T packaging cell lines to produce EGFP- IRES2-.sFrp2 Lentivirus. Secondly, mouse molar mesenchymal cells infected by EGFP- IRES2-sFrp2 Lentivirus were recombined with dental epithelium to investigate the effects of overexpression of sFrp2 on tooth development. These results showed that: as a result of sFrp2 overexpression, recombined tooth germs made teeth which have no difference in size or cusps.
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