Tbx16 cooperates with Wnt11 in assembling the zebrafish organizer.

ABSTRACT: The organizer, the signaling center that specifies vertebrate axial polarity and the nervous system, is a dorsal midline mesodermal domain in the gastrula that will form prechordal plate and anterior notochord. We show that in zebrafish the organizer is not a single domain when it first arises in the nascent mesoderm at the onset of gastrulation. Rather, in the presumptive prechordal plate region, the organizer is subdivided into two side-by-side cellular fields. Within minutes, concurrent medial and anterior cellular movements merge, or 'coalesce', the two fields to form the well-known singular midline field. Coalescence forms a symmetrical domain because the cell movements on the left and right sides initiate simultaneously and occur synchronously. However, in embryos with reduced functi

SUBMITTER: Muyskens JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1862409 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature