gremlin: DAN family, pronephric duct, neural crest
Gremlin; DAN family member, pronephric duct, neural crest
A DAN family member of cysteine knot proteins involved in extracellular regulation of BMP activity. Cloned by David Hsu et al., in Richard Harland's lab at Berkeley. Expressed in the pronephric duct (compare to antibody 4A6), the neural crest and crest derivatives.
Maternal Gremlin transcripts are present, but not localized in early-stage oocytes, and they are undetectable in mature oocytes and early-stage embryos. Despite its axial patterning activities, Gremlin is not expressed during gastrulation. Instead, zygotic Gremlin expression begins at tailbud stages, where it is largely correlated with neural crest lineages. At stage
27, Gremlin staining appears in the pronephric duct, with additional faint staining in the trunk and tail bud (Figure 2A). Staining in the pronephric duct may identify neural crest cells known to contribute to this structure. In stage 30±40 embryos, Gremlin expression extends rostrally and caudally to include neural crest cells at all axial levels (Figures 2B and 2C). In the head, staining is present in the mandibular segment of the neural crest. Caudally, staining illuminates the dorsal migration of neural crest cells into the fin, as well as the chevron-shaped pathways of their ventral migration. In addition, expression continues in the pronephric duct as it extends caudally.
Images and expression description are Copyright © 1998, Cell Press.
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