PUBLICATION
Variability of an Early Developmental Cell Population Underlies Stochastic Laterality Defects
- Authors
- Moreno-Ayala, R., Olivares-Chauvet, P., Schäfer, R., Junker, J.P.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-210114-19
- Date
- 2021
- Source
- Cell Reports 34: 108606 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Keywords
- dorsal forerunner cells, early development, heart laterality, left-right asymmetry, maternal effects, phenotypic variability, zebrafish
- Datasets
- GEO:GSE153621
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Embryo, Nonmammalian/embryology*
- Phenotype
- Zebrafish
- Zebrafish Proteins/metabolism*
- PubMed
- 33440143 Full text @ Cell Rep.
Citation
Moreno-Ayala, R., Olivares-Chauvet, P., Schäfer, R., Junker, J.P. (2021) Variability of an Early Developmental Cell Population Underlies Stochastic Laterality Defects. Cell Reports. 34:108606.
Abstract
Embryonic development seemingly proceeds with almost perfect precision. However, it is largely unknown how much underlying microscopic variability is compatible with normal development. Here, we quantify embryo-to-embryo variability in vertebrate development by studying cell number variation in the zebrafish endoderm. We notice that the size of a sub-population of the endoderm, the dorsal forerunner cells (DFCs, which later form the left-right organizer), exhibits significantly more embryo-to-embryo variation than the rest of the endoderm. We find that, with incubation of the embryos at elevated temperature, the frequency of left-right laterality defects is increased drastically in embryos with a low number of DFCs. Furthermore, we observe that these fluctuations have a large stochastic component among fish of the same genetic background. Hence, a stochastic variation in early development leads to a remarkably strong macroscopic phenotype. These fluctuations appear to be associated with maternal effects in the specification of the DFCs.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping