Figure 1

Conditional knockout of N-cadherin reduces β-catenin signaling in developing cortical precursors. (A) Immunostaining for d2EGFP (green) in E12.0 littermate control (Axin2-d2EGFP; Nes11Cre; Ncad^Flox/+) and Ncad cKO brain (Axin2-d2EGFP; Nes11Cre; Ncad^Flox/Flox) embryonic cortex reveals that conditional tissue-wide knockout of N-cadherin leads to reduced EGFP expression in the developing ventricular zone (VZ) (DNA stained with DAPI, pseudocolored blue; bar = 100 µm). (B) Focal elimination of N-cadherin reduces β-catenin transcriptional activity. β-catenin mediated transcriptional activation was examined through expression of destabilized GFP controlled by the TOP promoter. E13.5 embryos were electroporated with pTOP-dGFP, pCAG-mCherry, and pCAGLacZ in the control treatment, and with pTOP-dGFP, pCAG-mCherry, and pCAG-Cre in the experimental condition, and analyzed at E14.5. The dot image below shows the positions of the individual electroporated cells (yellow dots represent double-labeled mCherry/dGFP + cells and red dots represent dGFP- cells (expressing mCherry only)). Only electroporated cells in the VZ were included in the analysis, and the proportion of cells expressing dGFP was compared to the total number of electroporated cells in the VZ. *P = 0.0242 by unpaired Student’s t-test, n = 3 brains for each. Error bars represent 1 SEM. Bar = 50 µm. EP’d, electroporated.