Figure 7. Palate and craniofacial morphology of E16.5 embryos conditionally lacking Bmp7 in the epithelium or mesenchyme.

(A) Ventral views of palates from Bmp7^wt/wt, Bmp7^Δ/Δ, Bmp7^fl/fl:K14-Cre⁺ and Bmp7^fl/fl:wnt1-Cre⁺ embryos reveal that neither epithelial nor mesenchymal loss of Bmp7 can recapitulate the cleft palate phenotype of the complete knock-out. (B) Side and ventral aspects of the head show that neither the eye nor the cleft lower lip phenotype (arrowhead) is recapitulated in either conditional mutant. Note, that whereas epithelium-specific deletion of Bmp7 appeared not to affect snout size (orange dotted outline in image of mutant embryos corresponds to wt littermate) and lower lip, loss of Bmp7 in the mesenchyme led to a slight reduction in snout size and a dent at the tip of the lower lip.