The BMP antagonists cerberus-like and noggin do not interact during mouse forebrain development

Mouse cerberus-like encodes for a secreted factor of the Cerberus/Dan famil y. This molecule has neural inducing capabilities and can bind to BMP-4 and nodal molecules in the extracellular space. When cerberus-like is inactiva ted, its function may be compensated for another molecule, since no abnorma lities can be observed in the mouse mutant. Compensation mechanisms have be en shown to occur between the BMP antagonists chordin and noggin. Here we r eport the generation of cerberus-like(-/-);noggin(-/-) double mutants to un cover a possible compensation by noggin in cer-I-/-. mutant. Double mutants were obtained and failed to show any further detectable defects beside the ones presented by the noggin(-/-) single mutant. Contrarily to chordin and noggin, mouse cerberus-like and noggin cannot compensate for each other du ring mouse embryogenesis.