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Fig. 2 | Genome Biology

Fig. 2

From: Wnt evolution and function shuffling in liberal and conservative chordate genomes

Fig. 2

Complete atlas of Wnt expression in the cephalochordate Branchiostoma lanceolatum. Stage-matched expression patterns of 13 amphioxus Wnt genes reveal complex spatio-temporal choreography throughout embryogenesis. Wnt genes are ordered according to their developmental timing of expression: Wnt1, Wnt8, and Wnt11 are first expressed in the blastula (class A genes); Wnt3, Wnt4, Wnt5, and Wnt6 begin in the gastrula (class B genes); Wnt7, Wnt16, Wnt10, Wnt2, and Wnt9 in the early neurula (N2; class C genes); and WntA in the mid-late neurula (N3 class D gene). All Wnt genes are expressed through to early larval stages (L1), prior to mouth opening. Arrowheads are color-coded to match schematics based on germ layer origins: light blue, ectoderm including tail fin (fi); dark blue, neural tube (nt) and cerebral vesicle (cv); yellow, endoderm derivatives including foregut (fg), hindgut (hg), preoral pit (pp), endostyle (es), club-shaped gland (csg), and gill slit primordium (gs); orange, mesendoderm; red, mesoderm derivatives including somites (so) and mesothelial cells (me); fuchsia, axial mesoderm derivatives including notochord (no); white, tailbud structures (tb, boxed), including neurenteric canal and chordoneural hinge; black, mouth primordium (mo). Note that only some somites are represented for the sake of clarity to permit visualization of underlying tissues. For all genes, anterior is to the left and dorsal up; developmental stages are indicated at the top and embryo schematics are shown at the bottom. Lateral and dorsal views are shown, with the exception of blastulae (blast), for which only lateral views are represented, and gastrula stage G3, for which lateral and blastopore (white asterisk) views are shown. Dotted lines indicate planes of sectioning in larvae L1. Scale bars = 50 μm. Please see Additional file 1: Text S1 for a detailed gene-by-gene description of all amphioxus Wnt expression patterns

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