How the sea squirt nucleus tells mesoderm not to be endoderm.
Sea squirts are simple invertebrate chordates. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Takatori et al. show nuclear migration within ascidian mesendodermal cells enables polarized localization of Not mRNA, which encodes a homeobox protein that distinguishes mesoderm from endoderm fates. The link between nuclear migration and mRNA localization suggests exciting parallels with protostomes.
Department of Biochemistry, The University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QU, UK.
Richard M
RM
Parton
Ilan
I
Davis