Abstract

Although decades of studies have produced a generalized model for tetrapod limb development, urodeles deviate from anurans and amniotes in at least two key respects: their limbs exhibit preaxial skeletal differentiation and do not develop an apical ectodermal ridge (AER). Here, we investigated how Sonic hedgehog (Shh) and Fibroblast growth factor (Fgf) signaling regulate limb development in the axolotl. We found that Shh-expressing cells contributed to the most posterior digit, and that inhibiting Shh-signaling inhibited Fgf8 expression, anteroposterior patterning, and distal cell proliferation. In addition to lack of a morphological AER, we found that salamander limbs also lack a molecular AER. We found that amniote and anuran AER-specific Fgfs and their cognate receptors were expressed entirely in the mesenchyme. Broad inhibition of Fgf-signaling demonstrated that this pathway regulates cell proliferation across all three limb axes, in contrast to anurans and amniotes where Fgf-signaling regulates cell survival and proximodistal patterning.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-20-2019

Notes/Citation Information

Published in eLife, v. 8, e48507, p. 1-28.

© 2019, Purushothaman et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48507.001

Funding Information

National Science Foundation (IOS -1353713): Ashley W. Seifert

Related Content

Sequencing data have been previously published and are publicly available. Source data have been provided in Supplementary files 1 and 2.

The following previously published dataset was used:

Gerber, T., Murawala, P., Knapp, D., Masselink W., Schuez, M., Hermann. S., ... & Treutlein, B. (2018). scRNAseq dataset, Table S7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE106269

elife-48507-supp1-v2.xlsx (29 kB)
Supplementary file 1: Details of gene sequences used to make the antisense probes for in situ hybridization experiments. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48507.021

elife-48507-supp2-v2.xlsx (26 kB)
Supplementary file 2: Gene expression analysis for qRT-PCR using excel. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48507.022

elife-48507-transrepform-v2.pdf (300 kB)
Transparent reporting form. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48507.023

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