The Shh signalling pathway in early tooth development

The Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) signalling pathway has been proposed to play an important role in mammalian tooth development. We describe the spatial and temporal expression of genes in this pathway during early tooth development and interpret these patterns in terms of the likely roles of Shh signalling. We show that the two putative receptors of the Shh ligand, Ptc and Ptch-2, localise in different cells, suggesting Shh may function in different ways as an epithelial and mesenchymal signal. Shh signalling has previously been shown, in other organs, to stimulate cell proliferation. In this paper we analyse the Fgf signalling pathway in Gli-2 mutants and propose a mechanism as to how Gli-2 may regulate cell proliferation in tooth development.