Expression patterns of Notch1, Serrate1, Serrate2 and Delta1 in tissues of the developing chick limb

Abstract Signalling via the receptor Notch, delivered by the ligands Delta and Serrate, plays a key role in many cell fate decisions in both Drosophila and vertebrate development (for review see Artavanis-Tsakonas, S., Matsuno, K. and Fortini, M.E., 1995. Notch signalling. Science 268, 225–232; Lewis, J., 1996. Neurogenic genes and vertebrate neurogenesis. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 6, 3–10; Blair, S.S., 1997. Limb development: marginal fringe benefits. Curr Biol. 7, 686–690; Irvine, K.D. and Vogt, T.F., 1997. Dorsal-ventral signaling in limb development. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 9, 867–876). Recently vertebrate homologues of Notch ( Notch1 ; Myat, A., Henrique, D., Ish-Horowicz, D. and Lewis, J., 1996. A chick homologue of Serrate and its relationship with Notch and Delta homologues during central neurogeneis. Dev. Biol. 174, 233–247) and Serrate ( Serrate1 and 2 ; Myat, A., Henrique, D., Ish-Horowicz, D. and Lewis, J., 1996. A chick homologue of Serrate and its relationship with Notch and Delta homologues during central neurogeneis. Dev. Biol. 174, 233–247; Hayashi, H., Mochii, M., Kodama, R., Hamada, Y., Mizuno, N., Eguchi, G. and Tachi, C., 1996. Isolation of a novel chick homolog of Serrate and its coexpression with Notch-1 in chick development. Int. J. Dev. Biol. 40, 1089–96; Laufer, E., Dahn, R., Orozco, O.E., Yeo, C.Y., Pisenti, J., Henrique, D., Abbott, U., Fallon, J.F. and Tabin, C., 1997. Expression of Radical fringe in limb-bud ectoderm regulates apical ectodermal ridge formation. Nature 386, 366–373; Rodriguez-Esteban, C., Schwabe, J.W., De La Pena, J., Foys, B., Eshelman, B. and Izpisua-Belmonte, J.C., 1997. Radical fringe positions the apical ectodermal ridge at the dorsoventral boundary of the vertebrate limb. Nature 386, 360–366) were shown to be expressed in early chick limb mesenchyme and apical ridge. However, later expression patterns of these genes and of Delta 1 (Henrique, D., Adam, J., Myat, A., Chitnis, A., Lewis, J. and Ish-Horowicz, D., 1995. Expression of a Delta homologue in prospective neurons in the chick. Nature 375, 787–790) in vertebrate limbs have not been documented. We have used whole mount in-situ hybridization to document expression patterns of Notch1 , Serrate1 , Serrate2 and Delta1 within the mesenchyme of the developing chick limb up to stage 31 of development. We show these genes are expressed, in different combinations, in the vasculature, the musculature and the tissues of the handplate.