title: Cloning and expression of a novel armadillo motif containing gene in Xenopus.
abstract: We report an isolation of a cDNA containing armadillo motif (XAMP: Xenopus armadillo motif protein) and its expression during Xenopus development. The open reading frame of Xamp encodes a predicted protein of 275 amino acids including an armadillo motif, and a bipartite nuclear localization signal. Xamp shares significant homology with a putative mouse protein (GeneBank AK009402) in the database. It is expressed both maternally and zygotically. Xamp is localized to the animal region of an egg and in the ectoderm of a gastrula stage embryo. At the neurula stages, Xamp is expressed in the dorsal region of neural tube from which presumptive sensory neurons arise. In addition to its neural tissue specific expression, Xamp transcripts are found to be localized in the developing gut tube. At the early tadpole stage, Xamp is expressed predominantly in the pharyngeal endoderm. As further development proceeds, its expression domain expands to include the entire foregut region but excludes the midgut and hindgut regions. This polarized pattern of expression persists until stage 46 after which, anterior specific expression of Xamp sharply decreases. These results suggest that Xamp may have a role in the neural tissue specification and gut endoderm patterning during the Xenopus development.
authors.affiliation: Division of Molecular and Life Sciences, Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31 Hyoja Dong, Pohang, Kyungbuk, 790-784, South Korea.
authors.forename: Jae-Young
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Jin-Kwan
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D020816:Amino Acid Motifs / Q000235:genetics*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D051186:Armadillo Domain Proteins; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D004064:Digestive System / Q000196:embryology / Q000378:metabolism; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017385:Sequence Homology; D015534:Trans-Activators / Q000235:genetics*; D014981:Xenopus
chemical_list: D051186:Armadillo Domain Proteins; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D015534:Trans-Activators