distribution of specific glycoconjugates in early mouse embryonic notochord and paraxial mesenchyme

it is well known that glycoconjugate components of the cell surface and extracellular matrix, play an essential role(s) in many developmental phenomena such as cell differentiation, migration, and cellular interactions. the purpose of this study was to investigate distribution of this macromolecules during differentiation of the notochord and paraxial mesoderm. formalin fixed paraffin sections of 9 to 16 days of balb/c mouse embryos were processed for histochemical studies using four different horseradish peroxidase conjugated lectins including wheat germ agglutinin (wga), griffonia simplicifolia (gsa1-b4), arachis hypogaea (pna) and lotus tetragonolobus (lta), specific for sialic acid, galactose, n-acetylgalactosamine (galnac) and fucose terminal sugar, respectively. our results showed that in primordial of the developing vertebrae pna sensitive glycoconjugate appeared on gestational day 13 and increased to gestational day 15 significantly (p<0.05) and disappeared later. gsa1-b4 revealed no reaction and lta and wga reactions were observed only in notochord. among the lectins that were used in this study, only pna showed continuous and strong reaction just during gestational day 13 to 15. this finding suggests that pna temporally regulated changes occurred during early vertebral development in mouse embryos and probably their specific terminal sugar plays a key role(s) during prechondrogenic vertebrae