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Silberblick/Wnt11 mediates convergent extension movements during zebrafish gastrulation

Abstract

Vertebrate gastrulation involves the specification and coordinated movement of large populations of cells that give rise to the ectodermal, mesodermal and endodermal germ layers. Although many of the genes involved in the specification of cell identity during this process have been identified, little is known of the genes that coordinate cell movement. Here we show that the zebrafish silberblick (slb) locus1 encodes Wnt11 and that Slb/Wnt11 activity is required for cells to undergo correct convergent extension movements during gastrulation. In the absence of Slb/Wnt11 function, abnormal extension of axial tissue results in cyclopia and other midline defects in the head2. The requirement for Slb/Wnt11 is cell non-autonomous, and our results indicate that the correct extension of axial tissue is at least partly dependent on medio-lateral cell intercalation in paraxial tissue. We also show that the slb phenotype is rescued by a truncated form of Dishevelled that does not signal through the canonical Wnt pathway3, suggesting that, as in flies4, Wnt signalling might mediate morphogenetic events through a divergent signal transduction cascade. Our results provide genetic and experimental evidence that Wnt activity in lateral tissues has a crucial role in driving the convergent extension movements underlying vertebrate gastrulation.

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Figure 1: The slb locus encodes Wnt11.
Figure 2: Injection of slb/wnt11 and dsh-ΔN RNA rescues the slb-/- mutant phenotype.
Figure 3: slb/wnt11 is required in lateral cells for convergent extension movements during gastrulation.
Figure 4: Convergent extension movements of paraxial mesodermal cells are affected in slb-/- mutant embryos.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Schilling, C. Houart, P. Haramis and F. Conlon for critical reading of this manuscript, many colleagues for providing reagents, and the late P. Haffter for providing data before publication. C.P.H. and M.L.C. were supported by postdoctoral fellowships from EMBO, the EC and the Wellcome Trust. G.J.R. and R.E.G. were supported by a grant from the German Human Genome Project. L.S. was supported by a PhD. grant from the Fundação para a ciência e a Technologia, Programa Praxis XXI. J.C.S. and D.L.S. were supported by the MRC. This work was also supported by a Human Frontier Science Programme grant to J.C.S., S.W.W., H. Sive and N. Ueno. S.W.W. is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow supported by the BBSRC and the Wellcome Trust.

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Correspondence to Carl-Philipp Heisenberg.

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Heisenberg, CP., Tada, M., Rauch, GJ. et al. Silberblick/Wnt11 mediates convergent extension movements during zebrafish gastrulation. Nature 405, 76–81 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35011068

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