WNT4/β-Catenin Pathway Maintains Female Germ Cell Survival by Inhibiting Activin βB in the Mouse Fetal Ovary

Abstract excerpt

Female germ cells are essential for organogenesis of the ovary; without them, ovarian follicles do not form and functional and structural characteristics of the ovary are lost. We and others showed previously that when either Wnt4 or beta-catenin was inactivated in the fetal ovary, female germ cells underwent degeneration. In this study, we set out to understand whether these two factors belong to the same...