Figures
Sea Urchin Maternal Gene Breaks Radial Symmetry
A new study by Haillot et al. reveals that Panda—a member of the TGF-β family of signaling molecule—is encoded by maternal mRNA and helps to break radial symmetry and orient the dorsal-ventral axis of the developing sea urchin embryo. The image shows 48-hour-old embryos rendered deficient for panda but then rescued by local injection of panda mRNA at the 2-cell stage. An antisense morpholino oligonucleotide targeting panda was first injected into the egg (red color), and then panda mRNA was injected into one blastomere at the 2-cell stage. Local expression of Panda (green color) rescues dorsal-ventral polarity and imposes a dorsal identity on the cells.
Image Credit: Emmanuel Haillot
Citation: (2015) PLoS Biology Issue Image | Vol. 13(9) September 2015. PLoS Biol 13(9): ev13.i09. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pbio.v13.i09
Published: September 30, 2015
Copyright: © 2015 Haillot. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A new study by Haillot et al. reveals that Panda—a member of the TGF-β family of signaling molecules—is encoded by maternal mRNA and helps to break radial symmetry and orient the dorsal-ventral axis of the developing sea urchin embryo. The image shows 48-hour-old embryos rendered deficient for panda but then rescued by local injection of panda mRNA at the 2-cell stage. An antisense morpholino oligonucleotide targeting panda was first injected into the egg (red color), and then panda mRNA was injected into one blastomere at the 2-cell stage. Local expression of Panda (green color) rescues dorsal-ventral polarity and imposes a dorsal identity on the cells.
Image Credit: Emmanuel Haillot