Our newest manuscript titled: Evolutionarily conserved Wnt/Sp5 signaling is critical for anterior-posterior axis patterning in sea urchin embryos was published in iScience. In this study we explored the role of a deeply conserved gene sp5 in Anterior-Posterior patterning. We found that sp5 is critical for endomesoderm specification downstream of Wnt/b-catenin and is also necessary for anterior neuroectoderm patterning downstream of non-canonical Wnt/JNK signaling. Our findings in this study provide strong support for the idea that Wnt-Sp5 signaling cassettes were critical for the establishment of early germ layers in the common deuterostome ancestor.
Read the full manuscript: https://www.cell.com/iscience/pdf/S2589-0042(23)02693-7.pdf.
