Figure 1

Identification of interstitial cell lineage-specific genes in Hydra by suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH). H. magnipapillata (strain sf-1) cDNA was used as tester and cDNA of interstitial cell free H. magnipapillata (sf1) as driver to generate a library enriched for transcripts of the interstitial cell lineage. BLASTx analysis could group 105 EST-contig sequences into three categories of homology: 45 sequences (43%) had strong similarities (e-value < 1e-20) to known metazoan proteins; 44 sequences (42%) had low e-values (>1e -7); 16 sequences (15%) had no homologues in the NCBI protein database, representing genes putatively restricted to the genus Hydra.