PUBLICATION
Promoting notochord fate and repressing muscle development in zebrafish axial mesoderm
- Authors
- Amacher, S.L. and Kimmel, C.B.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-980601-13
- Date
- 1998
- Source
- Development (Cambridge, England) 125: 1397-1406 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Amacher, Sharon, Kimmel, Charles B.
- Keywords
- floating head; spadetail; Xnot; not genes; no tail; Brachyury; genetic mosaic; floor plate; myogenesis
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Body Patterning/genetics*
- Embryo, Nonmammalian/physiology*
- Embryonic Induction/genetics
- Fetal Tissue Transplantation/physiology
- Gastrula/physiology*
- Mesoderm/physiology*
- Models, Genetic
- Muscle, Skeletal/embryology*
- Mutation
- Nervous System/embryology*
- Notochord/physiology*
- Polymerase Chain Reaction
- Zebrafish/embryology*
- Zebrafish/genetics*
- PubMed
- 9502721 Full text @ Development
Citation
Amacher, S.L. and Kimmel, C.B. (1998) Promoting notochord fate and repressing muscle development in zebrafish axial mesoderm. Development (Cambridge, England). 125:1397-1406.
Abstract
Cell fate decisions in early embryonic cells are controlled by interactions among developmental regulatory genes. Zebrafish floating head mutants lack a notochord; instead, muscle forms under the neural tube. As shown previously, axial mesoderm in floating head mutant gastrulae fails to maintain expression of notochord genes and instead expresses muscle genes. Zebrafish spadetail mutant gastrulae have a nearly opposite phenotype; notochord markers are expressed in a wider domain than in wild-type embryos and muscle marker expression is absent. We examined whether these two phenotypes revealed an antagonistic genetic interaction by constructing the double mutant. Muscle does not form in the spadetail;floating head double mutant midline, indicating that spadetail function is required for floating head mutant axial mesoderm to transfate to muscle. Instead, the midline of spadetail;floating head double mutants is greatly restored compared to that of floating head mutants; the floor plate is almost complete and an anterior notochord develops. In addition, we find that floating head mutant cells can make both anterior and posterior notochord when transplanted into a wild-type host, showing that enviromental signals can override the predisposition of floating head mutant midline cells to make muscle. Taken together, these results suggest that repression of spadetail function by floating head is critical to promote notochord fate and prevent midline muscle development, and that cells can be recruited to the notochord by environmental signals.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping