Comprehensive analysis of gene expression patterns of hedgehog-related genes.docVIP

BMC Genomics BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Comprehensive analysis of gene expression patterns of hedgehog-related genes Limin Hao1, Robert Johnsen3, Gilbert Lauter1,2, David Baillie3 and Thomas R Bürglin*1,2 Address: 1Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, and Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Karolinska Institutet, SE-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden, 2School of Life Sciences, S?dert?rns H?gskola, Alfred Nobels Allé 7, SE-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden and 3Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada Email: Limin Hao - limin.hao@biosci.ki.se; Robert Johnsen - bjohnsen@gene.mbb.sfu.ca; Gilbert Lauter - gilbert.lauter@biosci.ki.se; David Baillie - baillie@sfu.ca; Thomas R Bürglin* - thomas.burglin@biosci.ki.se * Corresponding author Published: 31 October 2006 Received: 17 March 2006 Accepted: 31 October 2006 BMC Genomics 2006, 7:280 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-7-280 This article is available from: /1471-2164/7/280 ? 2006 Hao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The Caenorhabditis elegans genome encodes ten proteins that share sequence similarity with the Hedgehog signaling molecule through their C-terminal autoprocessing Hint/Hog domain. These proteins contain novel N-terminal domains, and C. elegans encodes dozens of additional proteins containing only these N-terminal domains. These gene families are called warthog, groundhog, ground-like and quahog, collectively called hedgehog (hh)-related genes. Previously, the expression pattern of seventeen genes was examined, which showed that they are primarily expressed in the ectoderm. Results: With the completion of the C. elegans genome sequence in Novembe