, 2005). Pitx has an asymmetrical left-right expression pattern during deuterostome development ( Yasui et al., 2000) and may be involved in eye regeneration in zebrafish and Xenopus ( Cameron et al., 2005 and Day and Beck, 2011). The genetic control of cell transition from an undifferentiated state through to terminal differentiation is complex and controlled by multiple pathways. The group of genes belonging to the SOX family of transcription factors (SRY-box containing) play an important role

in this transition during development and regeneration. In this study we identified four contigs with sequence similarity to four members of the Dabrafenib nmr SOX family, namely Sox1, Sox9, Sox11 and Sox17 representing the SOX groups B1, E, C and F respectively. These assignments were further validated by phylogenetic analysis (Fig. 2). Sox1 is a gene linked with neuronal differentiation. Similarly Sox11 has been indicated in neurogenesis, particularly in promoting neural maturation (Bergsland et al., 2006). Increased Sox11 activity has been detected in both mouse nerve and zebrafish nerve and fin regeneration (Schebesta et al., 2006, Jankowski et al., 2009 and Guo et al., 2011). Sox9 has also been implicated in cell lineage determination in neuronal differentiation (Scott et al., 2010) but more widely in the production of cartilage by the formation of chondrocytes

(Bi et al., 1999, Pan et al., 2008 and Zhao et al., 2009). The action of these transcripts will be important, as nerve growth and differentiation are a key element of arm regeneration in the re-growth of the radial nerve cord which runs the length of the ophiuroid arm. The final Sox gene detected selleck chemicals in this study showed sequence similarity to Sox17a of S. purpuratus, which has several key roles within cell and body pattern determination including endoderm specification through interactions with β-catenin of the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway ( Sinner et al., 2004). The Wnt signalling pathway is highly

conserved and is central to the control of many cellular and developmental processes including cell proliferation and differentiation as well as embryonic development, cell cycle and tissue homeostasis (Teo and Kahn, 2010). Wnt genes have been identified Amisulpride during regeneration studies in several organisms including the hydra (Galliot and Chera, 2010), zebrafish (Bouzaffour et al., 2009), sea cucumber (Ortiz-Pineda et al., 2009) and planarians (Petersen and Reddien, 2008). One of the key members of the Wnt signalling pathway is β-catenin which was represented in our data by Ov_Contig_5842 as well as 15 other members found by sequence matching of transcripts involved in the Wnt KEGG pathway (Table 2, Fig. 3). Transforming growth factor (TGF) beta pathway genes control cell proliferation and differentiation. Their potential role in ophiuroid and crinoid regeneration has previously been identified and discussed (Patruno et al., 2001, Patruno et al., 2002, Patruno et al.