Identification of Lrig3 target genes in Xenopus animal caps injected with wnt3a and chordin. Xenopus laevis

During embryonic development, the neural crest is a transient, migratory cell population that differentiates into a large variety of tissues and contributes much to the formation of vertebrate body. In Xenopus, lrig3 is involved in neural crest formation by modulating FGF and Wnt signaling. Lrig3 functions downstream of pax3 and zic1 to regulate the expression of neural crest markers. We used microarrays to identify the lrig3 target genes during neural crest formation. Overall design: Xenopus embryos were injected with mRNAs or MO at two-cell stage. When developing to stage 9, the animal caps were dissected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. According to the mRNAs and MO injected, the animal caps (AC) were divided into four groups, including (1) uninjected control AC; (2) AC injected with chordin; (3) AC injected with chordin and wnt3a; (4) AC injected with chordin, wnt3a and lrig3MO. The injected animal caps were cultured till stage 15 and then collected for RT-PCR and microarray assay. Each group had two repeats.