Identification and gastrointestinal expression of Xenopus laevis FoxF2.

FoxF genes are essential for visceral mesoderm development from Drosophila to human. However, part of the difficulty of studying the visceral mesoderm is its relative inaccessibility during early development. Owing to its external development Xenopus laevis presents considerable advantages for the study of visceral mesoderm formation, yet FoxF2 has not been identified in this system. Here, we describe the cloning and expression pattern of XFoxF2 during embryonic development, metamorphosis and adulthood, and compare and contrast it to the expression of FoxF1 in Xenopus laevis and FoxF2 in mouse.