Background
The Focal Adhesion Kinase is a well studied tyrosine kinase involved in a wide number of cellular processes including cell adhesion and migration. It has also been shown to play important roles during embryonic development and targeted disruption of the FAK gene in mice
Conclusions
Overall, our data suggest an important role for the FERM domain in the activation of FAK and indicate that integrin signalling plays a limited role in the in vivo activation of FAK at least during the early stages of development.