Fig. 4

Developmental regulations of mud loach ACTA1, ACTC1, and ACTA2 transcripts, as addressed by RT-qPCR assay. Expression levels of each isoform were normalized against the expression of 18S rRNA control in each sample. Abbreviations for developmental stages are early blastula (EB), early gastrula (EG), late gastrula (LG), four-somite stage (4-SM), twelve- smote stage (12-SM), twenty-somite stage (20-SM), pre-hatching stage (PH), just hatching (JH) and yolk sac absorption (YSA). Based on ANOVA, statistically different means are indicated by different letters (a–j for ACTA1 and ACTC1, and a–d for ACTA2 shown under the X-axis labels). To avoid complicated viewing, T-bars for standard deviations are omitted from the final illustration