TGF-β family signaling in skeletal development, maintenance, and disease. TGF-β Family: Cold Spring Harbor Monogragh Archive

THE TRANSFORMING GROWTH FACTOR-β (TGF-β) FAMILY is critically involved in the development and maintenance of skeletal tissues. In searches for fac-tors with potent cartilage and bone inductive activities, TGF-β was isolated as cartilage-inducing factor (Seyedin et al. 1987), whereas bone morpho-genetic proteins (BMPs) were isolated as factors able to induce cartilage and bone formation (Urist 1965; Luyten et al. 1989). The TGF-β family shows extensive redundancy of ligands, receptors, agonists, and antagonists, yet the diverse temporal and spatial patterns of expression of each pathway com-ponent allow these signaling factors to direct skeletal development and homeostasis by regulating patterning, cell-fate determination, cell differen-tiaton, and bone remodeling. The critical roles of each factor are evident in mice with mutations in components of these pathways, whereas in vitr