Project description:The early embryo of the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum initially shows spherical symmetry in morphology. Following a symmetry breaking event, it forms a radially symmetric germ disc in the hemisphere of the egg. In this work, we conducted RNA-sequencing of cells isolated from small different regions of radially symmetric forming/formed germ discs, aming to identify candidate genes whose transcripts are locally expressed in early spider embryos.
Project description:The common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum is a chelicerate model organism for studying developmental mechanisms and their evolution in arthropods. In contrast to the well-studied model insect, Drosophila melanogaster, embryos of the spider undergo patterning in a cellular environment from early stages (at least after the number of the nuclei increase to 16). Use of spider embryos provide new opportunities to understand the evolution of developmental mechanisms underlying arthropod body plans. This analysis aims to generate genome-scale, developmental profiles of gene expression in embryos of the spider P. tepidariorum, which facilitate a wide range of studies using this spider species.
