Development 130, 2917-2928 2917 © 2003 The Company of Biologists Ltd doi:10.1242/dev.00511 Alx1, a member of the Cart1/Alx3/Alx4 subfamily of Paired-class homeodomain proteins, is an essential component of the gene network controlling skeletogenic fate specification in the sea urchin embryo Charles A. Ettensohn1,*, Michele R. Illies1, Paola Oliveri2 and Deborah L. De Jong1 1Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA 2Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA *Author for correspondence (e-mail:
[email protected]) Accepted 27 March 2003 SUMMARY In the sea urchin embryo, the large micromeres and their lineages at much later stages of development, however, progeny function as a critical signaling center and execute through a regulative pathway of skeletogenesis that is a complex morphogenetic program. We have identified a responsive to cell signaling. The Alx1 protein is highly new and essential component of the gene network that conserved among euechinoid sea urchins and is closely controls large micromere specification, the homeodomain related to the Cart1/Alx3/Alx4 family of vertebrate protein Alx1. Alx1 is expressed exclusively by cells of the homeodomain proteins. In vertebrates, these proteins large micromere lineage beginning in the first interphase regulate the formation of skeletal elements of the limbs, after the large micromeres are born. Morpholino studies face and neck. Our findings suggest that the ancestral demonstrate that Alx1 is essential at an early stage of deuterostome had a population of biomineral-forming specification and controls downstream genes required for mesenchyme cells that expressed an Alx1-like protein.