Digit patterning is controlled by a Bmp-Sox9-Wnt Turing network modulated by morphogen gradients

The goal of this microarray analysis was to see which genes are differentially expressed between Sox9-EGFP positive cells and Sox9-EGFP negative cells in E11.5 mouse limb bud autopods of the reporter Sox9-EGFP knock-in mouse(Nakamura et al 2011). This was done in order to gain insight of the genes that could contribute to the specification of the digits (Sox9 positive cells). Mesenchymal cells were extracted from the mouse (Sox9EGFP knock-in, Nakamura et al . 2011) embryo forelimb autopod at stage E11.5. Sox9EGFP-positive cells were FACS-sorted from Sox9EGFP-negative cells . Each FACS-sorted sample was made from several forelimb autopods (approximately n=10). Three replicates were used for each group of Sox9EGFP-positive cells and Sox9EGFP-negative cells. Extraction of total RNA, labeling and hybridization to the microarray were performed using attached protocols. We identified the genes that were differentially expressed between the two groups.