Isolation and characterization of chicken beta-catenin

beta-catenin interacts with a number of proteins in different important biological processes, including cell adhesion through cadherins, actin organization through fascin, body axis determination through Wnt signaling, tumor suppression through APC, and transcriptional activation through LEF-1. To examine its function in chicken embryogenesis, we isolated the chicken homolog of beta-catenin from a chicken embryo cDNA library. The sequence is highly conserved at the amino acid level between chicken, mouse (99%), human (99%) and Xenopus (97%). In-situ hybridization and immunostaining showed that in the developing limb, it is specifically expressed in the apical ectodermal ridge, suggesting a role in epithelial-mesenchymal interactions.