pubmed:abstractText |
In the long-germ insect Drosophila, a single extraembryonic membrane, the amnioserosa, covers the embryo at the dorsal side. In ancestral short-germ insects, an inner membrane, the amnion, covers the embryo ventrally, and an outer membrane, the serosa, completely surrounds the embryo. An early differentiation step partitions the uniform blastoderm into the anterior-dorsal serosa and the posterior-ventral germ rudiment giving rise to amnion and embryo proper. In Drosophila, amnioserosa formation depends on the dorsoventral patterning gene zerknüllt (zen), a derived Hox3 gene.
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