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XB-ART-39103
Development 2009 Apr 01;1367:1071-81. doi: 10.1242/dev.032912.
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The Wnt antagonists Frzb-1 and Crescent locally regulate basement membrane dissolution in the developing primary mouth.



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The primary mouth forms from ectoderm and endoderm at the extreme anterior of the embryo, a conserved mesoderm-free region. In Xenopus, a very early step in primary mouth formation is loss of the basement membrane between the ectoderm and endoderm. In an unbiased microarray screen, we defined genes encoding the sFRPs Frzb-1 and Crescent as transiently and locally expressed in the primary mouth anlage. Using antisense oligonucleotides and ;face transplants', we show that frzb-1 and crescent expression is specifically required in the primary mouth region at the time this organ begins to form. Several assays indicate that Frzb-1 and Crescent modulate primary mouth formation by suppressing Wnt signaling, which is likely to be mediated by beta-catenin. First, a similar phenotype (no primary mouth) is seen after loss of Frzb-1/Crescent function to that seen after temporally and spatially restricted overexpression of Wnt-8. Second, overexpression of either Frzb-1 or Dkk-1 results in an enlarged primary mouth anlage. Third, overexpression of Dkk-1 can restore a primary mouth to embryos in which Frzb-1/Crescent expression has been inhibited. We show that Frzb-1/Crescent function locally promotes basement membrane dissolution in the primary mouth primordium. Consistently, Frzb-1 overexpression decreases RNA levels of the essential basement membrane genes fibronectin and laminin, whereas Wnt-8 overexpression increases the levels of these RNAs. These data are the first to connect Wnt signaling and basement membrane integrity during primary mouth development, and suggest a general paradigm for the regulation of basement membrane remodeling.

???displayArticle.pubmedLink??? 19224982
???displayArticle.pmcLink??? PMC2685928
???displayArticle.link??? Development
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Species referenced: Xenopus laevis
Genes referenced: acta2 actl6a chrd cpn1 dkk1 fn1 frzb frzb2 kit lama1 mapk8 muc2 muc2l nrp1 pitx3 sfrp1 sfrp2 sfrp5 six1 tbx2 tuba4b vgll2
???displayArticle.antibodies??? Lama1 Ab1 Lama1 Ab2
???displayArticle.morpholinos??? frzb2 MO1

???displayArticle.gses??? GSE13377: NCBI

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References [+] :
Agathon, The molecular nature of the zebrafish tail organizer. 2003, Pubmed