Intercellular signaling molecules and their receptors, whose expression must be tightly regulated in time and space, coordinate organogenesis. Regulators of intracellular signaling pathways provide an additional level of control. Here we report that loss of the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) antagonist, Sprouty1 (Spry1), causes defects in kidney development in mice. Spry1(-/-) embryos have supernumerary ureteric buds, resulting in the development of multiple ureters and multiplex kidneys. These defects are due to increased sensitivity of the Wolffian duct to GDNF/RET signaling, and reducing Gdnf gene dosage correspondingly rescues the Spry1 null phenotype. We conclude that the function of Spry1 is to modulate GDNF/RET signaling in the Wolffian duct, ensuring that kidney induction is restricted to a single site. These results demonstrate the importance of negative feedback regulation of RTK signaling during kidney induction and suggest that failures in feedback control may underlie some human congenital kidney malformations.

Lung cancer is mainly caused by smoking, but the quantitative relations between smoking and histologic subtypes of lung cancer remain inconclusive. Using one of the largest lung cancer datasets ever assembled, we explored the impact of smoking on risks of the major cell types of lung cancer. This pooled analysis included 13,169 cases and 16,010 controls from Europe and Canada. Studies with population controls comprised 66.5% of the subjects. Adenocarcinoma (AdCa) was the most prevalent subtype in never smokers and in women. Squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC) predominated in male smokers. Age-adjusted odds ratios (ORs) were estimated with logistic regression. ORs were elevated for all metrics of exposure to cigarette smoke and were higher for SqCC and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) than for AdCa. Current male smokers with an average daily dose of >30 cigarettes had ORs of 103.5 (95% CI 74.8-143.2) for SqCC, 111.3 (95% CI 69.8-177.5) for SCLC, and 21.9 (95% CI 16.6-29.0) for AdCa. In women, the corresponding ORs were 62.7 (95% CI 31.5-124.6), 108.6 (95% CI 50.7-232.8), and 16.8 (95% CI 9.2-30.6), respectively. Whereas ORs started to decline soon after quitting, they did not fully return to the baseline risk of never smokers even 35 years after cessation. The major result that smoking exerted a steeper risk gradient on SqCC and SCLC than on AdCa is in line with previous population data and biological understanding of lung cancer development.

Sprouty was genetically identified as an antagonist of fibroblast growth factor signaling during tracheal branching in Drosophila. In this study, we provide a functional characterization of mammalian Sprouty1 and Sprouty2. Sprouty1 and Sprouty2 inhibited events downstream of multiple receptor tyrosine kinases and regulated both cell proliferation and differentiation. Using NIH3T3 cell lines conditionally expressing Sprouty1 or Sprouty2, we found that these proteins specifically inhibit the Ras/Raf/MAP kinase pathway by preventing Ras activation. In contrast, activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase pathway was not affected by Sprouty1 or Sprouty2. We further showed that Sprouty1 and Sprouty2 do no prevent the formation of a SNT⅐Grb2⅐Sos complex upon fibroblast growth factor stimulation, yet block Ras activation. Taken together, these results establish mammalian Sprouty proteins as important negative regulators of growth factor signaling and suggest that Sprouty proteins act downstream of the Grb2⅐Sos complex to selectively uncouple growth factor signals from Ras activation and the MAP Kinase pathway.Normal development requires precise spatial and temporal regulation of signal transduction pathways involved in cell growth and differentiation. Negative control of growth factor response is achieved both by restriction of the incoming signal itself and induction of counter regulatory mechanisms affecting the propagation of the signal. The expression of many inhibitors are induced by the pathway they eventually antagonize, providing the potential for a tight autoregulation (for a review, see Ref. 1). Recently, sprouty (spry) was identified by genetic studies as such an inhibitor (2).Spry was originally described as an antagonist of Breathless FGF 1 receptor signaling during tracheal branching in Drosophila Loss of function mutations of spry led to excessive FGF signaling and ectopic branching, whereas engineered overexpression of spry blocked the branching (2). As other groups reported genetic interactions between spry and several different receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK) in multiple contexts, it became clear that spry was a general inhibitor of RTK signaling during Drosophila development (3-6). Through a data base search, three human genes were identified with sequence similarity to Drosophila spry (2) and a fourth family member was described in the mouse (7). Mammalian spry genes are expressed in highly restricted patterns in the embryo during early development and in many adult tissues (7-9). In most tissues, the different family members appear to be co-regulated and their expression shows a close correlation with known sites of FGF signaling. Mammalian Spry proteins may be key regulators of several developmental processes, including lung branching morphogenesis, midbrain and anterior hindbrain patterning, and limb chondrocyte differentiation (8 -10).Genetic and biochemical analysis performed by Casci et al. (3) suggested that Drosophila Spry negatively regulates the Ras pathway, but the molecular mechani...

Sprouty proteins are recently identified receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitors potentially involved in many developmental processes. Here, we report that Sprouty proteins become tyrosine phosphorylated after growth factor treatment. We identified Tyr55 as a key residue for Sprouty2 phosphorylation and showed that phosphorylation was required for Sprouty2 to inhibit RTK signaling, because a mutant Sprouty2 lacking Tyr55 augmented signaling. We found that tyrosine phosphorylation of Sprouty2 affected neither its subcellular localization nor its interaction with Grb2, FRS2/SNT, or other Sprouty proteins. In contrast, Sprouty2 tyrosine phosphorylation was necessary for its binding to the Src homology 2-like domain of c-Cbl after fibroblast growth factor (FGF) stimulation. To determine whether c-Cbl was required for Sprouty2-dependent cellular events, Sprouty2 was introduced into c-Cbl-wild-type and -null fibroblasts. Sprouty2 efficiently inhibited FGF-induced phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 in c-Cbl-null fibroblasts, thus indicating that the FGF-dependent binding of c-Cbl to Sprouty2 was dispensable for its inhibitory activity. However, c-Cbl mediates polyubiquitylation/proteasomal degradation of Sprouty2 in response to FGF. Last, using Src-family pharmacological inhibitors and dominant-negative Src, we showed that a Src-like kinase was required for tyrosine phosphorylation of Sprouty2 by growth factors. Thus, these data highlight a novel negative and positive regulatory loop that allows for the controlled, homeostatic inhibition of RTK signaling.

Our results show a consistent association between occupational exposure to diesel motor exhaust and increased risk of lung cancer. This association is unlikely explained by bias or confounding, which we addressed by adjusted models and subgroup analyses.