The effect of kitlga and kitlgb in sparse mutants. (A) Quantification of benzidine staining in the tail region (dashed box) of control (uninjected) embryos or WT or kita-mutant embryos (sparse) injected with epo mRNA, alone or in combination with kitlga or kitlgb mRNA. Values are plotted relative to the mean of epo (=1). (B) Expression of gata1a and hbbe1 from whole (dashed box) injected kita-mutant embryos (sparse) at 72 hpf, as measured by qPCR. Data were normalized using mob4 as the housekeeping gene and plotted relative to the mean of control sample (relative expression level 1). Bars represent the mean of 3 triplicates with standard deviation. **P ≤ .01, ***P ≤ .001, ****P ≤ .0001, standard 1-way analysis of variance. n.s., not significant (P > .05).