Figure 3

(A) Schematic of Opto-BMP strategy. Blue light-dimerizable VfLOV domains were fused to zebrafish BMP receptor kinase domains. Blue light exposure activates BMP signaling. (B) Embryos injected with mRNA encoding Opto-BMP at the one-cell stage and their uninjected siblings were reared in the dark or exposed to blue light for 10 h starting 70–80 min post-fertilization. Ventralization phenotypes V1-V4 (indicating excess BMP signaling) were scored at 1 day post-fertilization. Number of embryos: uninjected dark = 59, Opto-BMP dark = 53, uninjected light = 55, Opto-BMP light = 60. (C-E) Uninjected and Opto-BMP-injected embryos were exposed to blue light (2300 lux) for 30 min starting at high stage (3.5 hpf) or shield stage (6.75 hpf) and fixed during and after exposure. pSmad1/5/9 immunofluorescence was quantified and plotted in (C) as Opto-BMP minus uninjected signal with piecewise linear interpolation between timepoints; error bars represent standard error (see Materials and methods for statistical analysis). Blue background represents light exposure. Representative embryos from the high-stage (D) and shield-stage (E) experiments quantified in (C). pSmad1/5/9 signal is shown in magenta, DAPI in cyan. See the Figure 3—source data 1 file for source data.