title: Reaction-diffusion control of heart development: evidence for activation and inhibition in precardiac mesoderm.
abstract: In axolotl embryos homozygous for the cardiac-lethal (c) gene, the heart never begins to beat. Recently, we demonstrated that the c gene affects the heart mesoderm directly, making the latter incapable of responding to normal inductive stimuli. Based on these results, we proposed that a reaction-diffusion mechanism controls the later stages of vertebrate cardiogenesis. In the present study, we use a series of transplantations to examine the precardiac mesoderm of wild-type and cardiac-lethal mutant axolotl embryos for the activation and inhibition predicted by our model. When one or both heart primordia in c/c embryos were replaced with +/+ tissue at early stages, functional hearts developed, indicating that an activator-like activity is present in wild-type heart mesoderm. At later stages, replacement of the entire heart-field mesoderm also rescued mutant embryos, but replacement of only the heart-forming mesoderm did not, indicating that the mutant heart field has inhibitory properties. These results demonstrate that activator- and inhibitor-like factors are present in pre-cardiac mesoderm and thus provide evidence for reaction-diffusion control of postinductive heart development.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Life Sciences Centre, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Armstrong
mesh_terms: D000557:Ambystoma / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D004058:Diffusion; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian; D006321:Heart / Q000196:embryology* / Q000254:growth & development; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000637:transplantation; D010641:Phenotype