The dynamic expression of extraembryonic marker genes in the beetle Tribolium castaneum reveals the complexity of serosa and amnion formation in a short germ insect.

Most insect embryos develop with two distinct extraembryonic membranes, the serosa and the amnion. In the insect beetle Tribolium the early origin of the serosa within the anterior blastoderm is well established but the origin of the amnion is still debated. It is not known whether this tissue develops from a blastodermal precursor or originates de novo later from embryonic tissue during embryogenesis. We undertook an in-depth analysis of the spatio-temporal expression pattern profile of important extraembryonic membrane marker genes with emphasis on early blastoderm development in Tribolium. The amnion marker iroquois (Tc-iro) was found co-expressed with the serosa marker zerknüllt1 (Tc-zen1) during early blastoderm formation in an anterior cap domain. This domain later resolved into two adjacent domains that likely represent the precursors of the serosa and the amnion. In addition, we found the hindsight ortholog in Tribolium (Tc-hnt) to be a serosa-specific marker. Surprisingly, decapentaplegic (Tc-dpp) expression was not seen as a symmetric cap domain but detected asymmetrically first along the DV- and later also along the AP-axis. Moreover, we found a previously undescribed domain of phosphorylated MAD (pMAD) protein in anterior ventral serosal cells. This is the first study showing that the anterior-lateral part of the amnion originates from the anterior blastoderm while the precursor of the dorsal amnion develops later de novo from a dorsal-posterior region within the differentiated blastoderm.