Gastrulation in Xenopus

Morphogenetic interactions before gastrulation in the amphibian, Xenopus laevis--the cortical field.

The polarity-inducing kinase Par-1 controls Xenopus gastrulation in cooperation with 14-3-3 and aPKC.

Par (partitioning-defective) genes were originally identified in Caenorhabditis elegans as determinants of anterior/posterior polarity. However, neither their function in vertebrate development nor their action mechanism has been fully addressed. Here we show that two members of Par proteins, 14-3-3 (Par-5) and atypical PKC (aPKC), regulate the serine/threonine kinase Par-1 to control Xenopus g...

Identification of a second Xenopus twisted gastrulation gene.

Twisted Gastrulation (Tsg) is a secreted molecule which regulates BMP signalling in the extracellular space as part of an evolutionarily conserved network of interacting proteins. In Xenopus, maternal xTsg mRNA can be found throughout the early embryo. After gastrulation, xTsg is expressed as part of the BMP4 synexpression group until late tadpole stages. Here we report the identification of a ...

Gastrulation movements provide an early marker of mesoderm induction in Xenopus laevis

The first inductive interaction in amphibian development is mesoderm induction, in which an equatorial mesodermal rudiment is induced from the animal hemisphere under the influence of a signal from vegetal pole blastomeres. We have recently discovered that the Xenopus XTC cell line secretes a factor which has the properties we would expect of a mesoderm-inducing factor. In this paper, we show t...

The specification of heart mesoderm occurs during gastrulation in Xenopus laevis.

The establishment of heart mesoderm during Xenopus development has been examined using an assay for heart differentiation in explants and explant combinations in culture. Previous studies using urodele embryos have shown that the heart mesoderm is induced by the prospective pharyngeal endoderm during neurula and postneurula stages. In this study, we find that the specification of heart mesoderm...

Adhesive Crosstalk in Gastrulation

lation. Recent studies show that signaling through integrin As a first step in describing the nature of the crosstalk receptors is required for normal cell movements durbetween integrin and C-cadherin, Marsden and DeSiing Xenopus gastrulation. Integrins function in this mone present evidence that integrin-mediated homoprocess by modulating the activity of cadherin adhetypic cell binding in diff...