Fig. 3. Expression of p120 morpholino (MO) affects the size of the eyes and cartilage. (A) Injection of p120 MO at 8- to 16-cell stage in the region that gives rise to the head results in the formation of smaller eyes or their complete loss (d,e) compared with control MO-injected embryos (a,b). Tadpoles are shown alive at stages 33 (a,d) and 42 (b,e), or fixed and stained by Alcian Blue to reveal the cartilage structures at stage 46 (c,f). Next to smaller or absent eyes, embryos injected with p120 MO also show smaller craniofacial cartilage structures (f) compared with control MO-injected embryos (c). (B) Graph representing the effect of p120 MO on the size of the craniofacial skeleton. For clarity of the figure, representative experiments are shown. The width of the head was calculated by taking the sum of both arrows indicated in A,c. Values were divided by the average value of non-injected embryos. The head size of embryos injected with p120 MO is statistically different from that of the control population (P=0.0068, Student's t-test). This effect can be rescued by co-injection of RNA encoding Xp120 (30 pg), dominant negative (DN) Rac (33 pg), or DN LIMK (500 pg). Wild type (WT) Rho (125 pg) and CA ROCK (150 pg) are unable to rescue the effect of p120 MO on the size of the head.