Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 211, Issue 2, 15 July 1999, Pages 208-219
Developmental Biology

Regular Article
Morphological Domains of Lewis-X/FORSE-1 Immunolabeling in the Embryonic Neural Tube Are Due to Developmental Regulation of Cell Surface Carbohydrate Expression

https://doi.org/10.1006/dbio.1999.9308Get rights and content
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Abstract

The Lewis-X (LeX) carbohydrate epitope, recognized by the FORSE-1 monoclonal antibody (mAb), shares expression boundaries with neural regulatory genes and may be involved in patterning the neural tube by creating domains of differential cell adhesion. The present experiments focus on the question of what determines the expression pattern of LeX in embryonic rat brain. Comparisons of FORSE-1-positive glycolipid and protein antigens in embryonic, early postnatal, and adult tissues show that the LeX epitope is carried primarily by glycolipids during embryonic development and by a proteoglycan and glycoproteins in postnatal and adult tissue. Immunohistochemistry using FORSE-1 and an antibody to the proteoglycan phosphacan, which carries LeX, shows that the distribution of LeX is more restricted than phosphacan. These observations suggest that the precise spatial regulation of FORSE-1 binding in the embryonic forebrain is due to the expression pattern of the LeX carbohydrate on glycolipids, rather than to the transcriptional regulation of a carrier protein.

Keywords

patterning
adhesion
carbohydrate
LeX
glycolipid
proteoglycan

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1

Present address: Ontogeny, Inc., 45 Moulton St., Cambridge, MA 02138.

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To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax: (626) 585-8743. E-mail: [email protected].