The Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) act in many key regulatory processes during development, including dorsoventral axis specification and organ development and are part of a conserved signal pathway. Specifically, BMP7 is a vital signaling molecule for normal development in the mammalian system. The zebrafish mutant snailhouse (snh) was originally isolated as being strongly dorsalized and the mutation was determined to lie within the bmp7 gene. We report here the cloning and expression of a second bmp7 homolog, which we term bmp7b. Sequence alignments show that bmp7b is more closely related to human, mouse and non-mammalian BMP7 than is snh. We further show that bmp7b is strongly expressed in developing organ systems such as the eyes, the ears, the pronephric kidney and the gastrointestinal system.

中文翻译：

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在发育器官系统中表达的斑马鱼中 BMP7 同源物的鉴定。

骨形态发生蛋白 (BMP) 在发育过程中的许多关键调节过程中起作用，包括背腹轴规范和器官发育，并且是保守信号通路的一部分。具体而言，BMP7 是哺乳动物系统正常发育的重要信号分子。斑马鱼突变蜗牛 (snh) 最初被分离为强烈背化，突变被确定位于 bmp7 基因内。我们在这里报告了第二个 bmp7 同源物的克隆和表达，我们称之为 bmp7b。序列比对表明，与 snh 相比，bmp7b 与人类、小鼠和非哺乳动物 BMP7 的关系更密切。我们进一步表明 bmp7b 在发育中的器官系统中强烈表达，如眼睛、耳朵、前肾和胃肠系统。