Fig. 10

Deficiency of Shroom3 expression in the cranial neural folds of p120fl/fl;Wnt1Cre mutant mice. a, b. Coronal H&E stained whole-body sections were compared between a control E9.5 embryo (a) and a mutant E9.5 embryo (b). There is no closure for the cranial neural folds of the mutant embryo and NTD is obvious (b, arrow). In contrast, the caudal neural tube is normally closed (b, arrowhead). For areas comparable to those annotated by boxes c-g in a and b, confocal immunofluorescent analysis for p120ctn (green) and Shroom3 (red) (nuclear counterstaining by DAPI) was performed on specifically prepared samples (see Materials and Methods). In control samples (c, d) and in the posterior neural tube of the mutant (g), p120ctn and Shroom3 were nicely coexpressed, whereas in the cranial neural folds (f) and the NTD (e) of the mutant, p120ctn and Shroom3 were both ablated. Scale bars for a,b: 200 μm; for c-g: 20 μm