Relevant Group Publications: Genome Biol 2007

Sea Urchin

Via treatments of seaurchin embryos with LiCl2 that leads to excess endomesoderm and ZnCl2 that blocks endomesoderm formation and the subsequent hybridisation of the respective RNAs on cDNA arrays, we isolated novel tissue specific markers [1].

Whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH) analysis of 700 differentially expressed genes showed that the apical organ region is eliminated in lithium-treated embryos. Conversely, apical and neural markers are expressed more broadly in zinc-treated embryos where the number of serotonergic neurons is amplified by at least tenfold.

Whole mount insitu screen images and expression levels of genes from these screens are deposited at the Sea Urchin database.

Ciona

In a project funded by the "Marine Genomics" European Network of Excellence, we generated a Ciona microarray that carries oligos designed versus 2,053 Ciona Intestinalis genes. 631 of the above genes are Transcription factors, 1379 are Signal transduction genes and 481 are cell cycle genes.

To assess which genes are included on the Ciona microarrays, BLAST versus the Ciona database.