{"doi":"10.1242/dev.202597","title":"Gα13 controls pharyngeal endoderm convergence by regulating E-cadherin expression and RhoA activation","abstract":"Pharyngeal endoderm cells undergo convergence and extension (C&E), which is essential for endoderm pouch formation and craniofacial development. Our previous work implicates Gα13/RhoA-mediated signaling in regulating this process, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we have used endoderm-specific transgenic and Gα13 mutant zebrafish to demonstrate that Gα13 plays a crucial role in pharyngeal endoderm C&E by regulating RhoA activation and E-cadherin expression. We showed that during C&E, endodermal cells gradually establish stable cell-cell contacts, acquire apical-basal polarity and undergo actomyosin-driven apical constriction, which are processes that require Gα13. Additionally, we found that Gα13-deficient embryos exhibit reduced E-cadherin expression, partially contributing to endoderm C&E defects. Notably, interfering with RhoA function disrupts spatial actomyosin activation without affecting E-cadherin expression. Collectively, our findings identify crucial cellular processes for pharyngeal endoderm C&E and reveal that Gα13 controls this through two independent pathways - modulating RhoA activation and regulating E-cadherin expression - thus unveiling intricate mechanisms governing pharyngeal endoderm morphogenesis.","journal":"Development","year":2024,"id":503161,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9462,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1352769,"name":"Joshua Pinzour","orcid":"0009-0004-5276-5707","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1353088,"name":"Asmi Patel","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1352770,"name":"Faith Rooney","orcid":"0009-0000-6894-206X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1353089,"name":"Amie Zerwic","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567756,"name":"Yuanyuan Gao","orcid":"0000-0001-8122-2999","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567757,"name":"Nhan Trung Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0001-5142-4573","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1353090,"name":"Huaping Xie","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577389,"name":"Ye Ding","orcid":"0000-0002-8999-4624","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567760,"name":"Fang Lin","orcid":"0000-0003-2179-7031","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":567754,"name":"Bo Hu","orcid":"0000-0001-5656-9632","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":66,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:10:27.781502Z","pmid":"39258889","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}