Retinoic acid signalling links left–right asymmetric patterning and bilaterally symmetric somitogenesis in the zebrafish embryo

Yasuhiko Kawakami, Ángel Raya, R. Marina Raya, Concepción Rodríguez-Esteban and Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte ()
Additional contact information
Yasuhiko Kawakami: Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Ángel Raya: Salk Institute for Biological Studies
R. Marina Raya: Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Concepción Rodríguez-Esteban: Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte: Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Nature, 2005, vol. 435, issue 7039, 165-171

Abstract: Abstract During embryogenesis, cells are spatially patterned as a result of highly coordinated and stereotyped morphogenetic events. In the vertebrate embryo, information on laterality is conveyed to the node, and subsequently to the lateral plate mesoderm, by a complex cascade of epigenetic and genetic events, eventually leading to a left–right asymmetric body plan. At the same time, the paraxial mesoderm is patterned along the anterior–posterior axis in metameric units, or somites, in a bilaterally symmetric fashion. Here we characterize a cascade of laterality information in the zebrafish embryo and show that blocking the early steps of this cascade (before it reaches the lateral plate mesoderm) results in random left–right asymmetric somitogenesis. We also uncover a mechanism mediated by retinoic acid signalling that is crucial in buffering the influence of the flow of laterality information on the left–right progression of somite formation, and thus in ensuring bilaterally symmetric somitogenesis.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03512 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:435:y:2005:i:7039:d:10.1038_nature03512

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature03512

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().