Digit patterning is controlled by a Bmp-Sox9-Wnt Turing network modulated by morphogen gradients. Mus musculus

The goal of this microarray analysis was to see which genes are differentially expressed between Sox9-EGFP positive cells and Sox9-EGFP negative cells in E11.5 mouse limb bud autopods of the reporter Sox9-EGFP knock-in mouse(Nakamura et al 2011). This was done in order to gain insight of the genes that could contribute to the specification of the digits (Sox9 positive cells). Overall design: Mesenchymal cells were extracted from the mouse (Sox9EGFP knock-in, Nakamura et al . 2011) embryo forelimb autopod at stage E11.5. Sox9EGFP-positive cells were FACS-sorted from Sox9EGFP-negative cells . Each FACS-sorted sample was made from several forelimb autopods (approximately n=10). Three replicates were used for each group of Sox9EGFP-positive cells and Sox9EGFP-negative cells. Extraction of total RNA, labeling and hybridization to the microarray were performed using attached protocols. We identified the genes that were differentially expressed between the two groups.