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Figure 5 | EvoDevo

Figure 5

From: Key patterning genes contribute to leg elongation in water striders

Figure 5

wg expression and function in embryonic leg development. (A) wg mRNA is expressed in early embryos in a segmental pattern along the anterior posterior axis. (B) In embryos with limb buds, wg mRNA expands to the developing limb buds and is expressed in a proximal-distal stripe, which persists through later stages (C). (D) Mild wg RNAi results in little patterning defect, but leg length is affected where T2 legs do not reach till the head (arrow). (E) Leg length is increasingly affected in moderate wg RNAi embryos. (F) Severely affected wg RNAi embryos show segmentation defect such that the boundaries between segments are no longer discernable. In addition, the legs of these embryos appear thinner and curved. (G) The legs of mild wg RNAi embryos are significantly shorter than WT. Leg measurements for T1 legs, T2 legs, and T3 legs are represented in the different bars; the three measured leg segments - the femur, the tibia, and the tarsus - are represented in the segments of each bar. N = 10; error bars represent ±1 standard error. An ANCOVA test was performed to compare the leg length of phenotype embryos to their WT counterparts. An asterisk indicates that the test was significant at (P ≤ 0.01). RNAi: gene knockdown using ribonucleic acid interference; T1, 2, 3: thoracic segments 1, 2, 3; wg: wingless; WT: wild type.

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