Fig. 8. Injection of an antisense morpholino oligonucleotide directed against
mezzo in bon mutants. (A) Control embryo injected with 100
pg of an mRNA encoding a fusion protein between the 5' leader sequence
of mezzo and the sequence coding for the first 43 amino acids fused
to the coding sequence of the green fluorescent protein to make
mezzo-GFP mRNA. (F) Embryo injected with 100 pg of mezzo-GFP
mRNA and with 12 ng the antisense morpholino directed towards the 5' end
of mezzo (mezzo-MO). All the embryos injected with
mezzo-GFP mRNA were brightly fluorescent when examined at the shield
stage (A). In embryos co-injected with mezzo-GFP and 12 ng of
mezzo-MO, the fluorescence was abolished (F). Note that the camera
gain in this image was much higher than for the image in A. Using the same
setting as A, the image would be black. (B) bon mutants injected with
an unrelated morpholino directed against the sea urchin hatching enzyme mRNA
used as a negative control. (G) bon mutant embryo injected with 12 ng
of antisense morpholino targeted against mezzo. (C,H) Expression of
the prechordal plate marker goosecoid in control uninjected (C) and
in morpholino injected (H) bon mutant embryos at 80% epiboly. (D,I)
Expression of the hatching gland marker hgg1 in control uninjected
(D) and in morpholino injected (I) bon mutants. (E,J) Residual
sox17 expression in homozygous bon mutants at 80% epiboly
(E), and absence of sox17-expressing cells in bon mutants
injected with the morpholino (J). To unambiguously identify homozygous
bon mutants, their genotype was determined by PCR
(Kikuchi et al., 2001).