Transcriptional activator (By similarity). Participates in neural induction. Expressed in the animal hemisphere at early cleavage stages and in the presumptive ectoderm in the late blastula embryo. At gastrula stage (stage 10.5), expressed weakly in the anterior ectoderm distant from the blastopore. At neural plate stages (stage 13), expression appears in the anterior neural plate. At neural fold stage (stage 20), strongly expressed in the anterior of the neural tube. At stages 23 and 25, expression increases in the presumptive brain and appears in the optic vesicle. At tail bud stages, strongly expressed in the brain, eye and weakly in the spinal cord. In the tail bud brain, strongly expressed in the dorsal region. In the eye, expressed in strong in the dorsal roof of the brain vesicles. Expressed both maternally and zygotically. Expressed in unfertilized eggs and at blastula stages. Expression remains relatively high until late gastrula stage (stage 11) but becomes weaker at early neurula stages (stages 12 to 15). Expressed strongly at stages 18, 20 and 30. By bmp-antagonism. The 9aaTAD motif is a transactivation domain present in a large number of yeast and animal transcription factors. Unlike Ref.2, PubMed:17056008 doesn't detect maternal expression.