Anterior-posterior Wnt signaling network conservation between indirect developing sea urchin and hemichordate embryos

How animal body plans evolved and diversified is a major question in evolutionary developmental biology. To address this question, it is important to characterize the exact molecular mechanisms that establish the major embryonic axes which give rise to the adult animal body plan. The anterior-posterior (AP) axis is the first axis to be established in most animal embryos, and in echinoderm sea urchin embryos its formation is governed by an integrated network of three different Wnt signaling...