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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Feb 6.
Published in final edited form as: Dev Biol. 2006 Aug 7;300(1):252–266. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2006.07.044

Figure 6. Basement Membrane ECM Toolkit.

Figure 6

To date, all metazoan genomes encode a basic set (“toolkit”) of extracellular matrix proteins that form the core of basement membranes. This set includes a pair of type IV collagen genes (collagen repeats are indicated by black boxes), typically arranged head-to-head and probably sharing a promoter, collagen XV/XVIII, a set of laminin genes (2α, 1β, 1γ), nidogen and perlecan. The sea urchin genome encodes a similar set as shown. Laminin and collagen genes are listed in Supplementary Tables 9 and 10. The nidogen gene comprises gene prediction, SPU_016055 plus a missing N-terminal NIDO domain, and the perlecan gene comprises gene predictions, SPU_000937; SPU_012324; SPU_026338; SPU_028620 (see Suppl. Table 2). In the present state of the genome assembly, it is not possible to derive complete gene predictions for these two genes but it seems clear that good orthologs do exist in the sea urchin genome. For information about the SMART domains presented in this figure, see Suppl. Figure 16.