Int. J. Dev. Biol. 48: 1155 - 1158 (2004)

https://doi.org/10.1387/ijdb.041917ht

Vol 48, Issue 10

Identification and developmental expression of Xenopus paraxis

Developmental Expression Pattern | Published: 1 December 2004

Hsiu-Ting Tseng¹ and Milan Jamrich*^{,1, 2, 3}

¹ Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, ² Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and ³Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA

Abstract

During vertebrate embryogenesis, the paraxial mesoderm becomes segmented in a rostro-caudal progression and gives rise to the somites. In this paper we report the isolation of a Xenopus orthologue of paraxis, a member of a family of basic helix-loop-helix proteins, which has been suggested to play a role in paraxial mesoderm development. Xenopus paraxis is initially expressed in the presomitic paraxial mesoderm and later in the dorsal portion of the developing somites. Finally, paraxis expression becomes restricted to the most dorso-lateral region of mature somites.

Keywords

paraxis, bHLH, somite, paraxial mesoderm, dermatome