Contribution of the canonical Wnt pathway in Tribolium anterior-posterior axis patterning

TL;DRAbstract

How animals polarize and establish the main axis during embryogenesis has been one of the most attractive questions in Biology.Increasing body of work in various model organisms implicates that most metazoans utilize the canonical Wnt signaling pathway to pattern the anterior-posterior (AP) axis, despite the limited evidence from arthropods.In Drosophila, a highly derived insect, canonical Wnt activity is not required for global AP patterning, but in typical insects including Tribolium castaneum, loss of canonical Wnt activity results in posterior truncation.To determine the effects of increased canonical Wnt levels, I analyzed the function of axin, encoding a highly conserved negative regulator of the pathway.Tc-axin transcripts are maternally localized to the anterior pole in freshly laid eggs.Parental RNAi for Tc-axin produced progeny phenotypes that ranged from mildly affected embryos with cuticles displaying a graded loss of anterior structures, to severely affected embryos lackin

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