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ABSTRACT: Left-right (L/R) patterning is crucial for the proper development of all vertebrates and requires asymmetric expression of nodal in the lateral plate mesoderm (LPM). The mechanisms governing asymmetric initiation of nodal have been studied extensively, but because Nodal is a potent activator of its own transcription, it is also crucial to understand the regulation required to maintain this asymmetry once it is established. The 'midline barrier', consisting of lefty1 expression, is a conserved mechanism for restricting Nodal activity to the left. However, the anterior and posterior extremes of the LPM are competent to respond to Nodal signals yet are not adjacent to this barrier, suggesting that lefty1 is not the only mechanism preventing ectopic Nodal activation. Here, we demonstrate the existence of two additional midline barriers. The first is a 'posterior barrier' mediated by Bmp signaling that prevents nodal propagation through the posterior LPM. In contrast to previous reports, we find that Bmp represses Nodal signaling independently of lefty1 expression and through the activity of a ligand other than Bmp4. The 'anterior barrier' is mediated by lefty2 expression in the left cardiac field and prevents Nodal activation from traveling across the anterior limit of the notochord and propagating down the right LPM. Both barriers appear to be conserved across model systems and are thus likely to be present in all vertebrates.
Development 10/2011; 138(20):4405-10. · 6.60 Impact Factor
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Jennifer B Phillips,
Bernardo Blanco-Sanchez,
Jennifer J Lentz,
Alexandra Tallafuss,
Kornnika Khanobdee,
Srirangan Sampath,
Zachary G Jacobs,
Philip F Han,
Monalisa Mishra, Tom A Titus,
David S Williams,
Bronya J Keats,
Philip Washbourne,
Monte Westerfield
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ABSTRACT: Usher syndrome is the most prevalent cause of hereditary deaf-blindness, characterized by congenital sensorineural hearing impairment and progressive photoreceptor degeneration beginning in childhood or adolescence. Diagnosis and management of this disease are complex, and the molecular changes underlying sensory cell impairment remain poorly understood. Here we characterize two zebrafish models for a severe form of Usher syndrome, Usher syndrome type 1C (USH1C): one model is a mutant with a newly identified ush1c nonsense mutation, and the other is a morpholino knockdown of ush1c. Both have defects in hearing, balance and visual function from the first week of life. Histological analyses reveal specific defects in sensory cell structure that are consistent with these behavioral phenotypes and could implicate Müller glia in the retinal pathology of Usher syndrome. This study shows that visual defects associated with loss of ush1c function in zebrafish can be detected from the onset of vision, and thus could be applicable to early diagnosis for USH1C patients.
Disease Models and Mechanisms 07/2011; 4(6):786-800. · 4.94 Impact Factor
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Adriana Rodríguez-Marí,
Catherine Wilson, Tom A Titus,
Cristian Cañestro,
Ruth A BreMiller,
Yi-Lin Yan,
Indrajit Nanda,
Adam Johnston,
John P Kanki,
Erin M Gray,
Xinjun He,
Jan Spitsbergen,
Detlev Schindler,
John H Postlethwait
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ABSTRACT: Mild mutations in BRCA2 (FANCD1) cause Fanconi anemia (FA) when homozygous, while severe mutations cause common cancers including breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers when heterozygous. Here we report a zebrafish brca2 insertional mutant that shares phenotypes with human patients and identifies a novel brca2 function in oogenesis. Experiments showed that mutant embryos and mutant cells in culture experienced genome instability, as do cells in FA patients. In wild-type zebrafish, meiotic cells expressed brca2; and, unexpectedly, transcripts in oocytes localized asymmetrically to the animal pole. In juvenile brca2 mutants, oocytes failed to progress through meiosis, leading to female-to-male sex reversal. Adult mutants became sterile males due to the meiotic arrest of spermatocytes, which then died by apoptosis, followed by neoplastic proliferation of gonad somatic cells that was similar to neoplasia observed in ageing dead end (dnd)-knockdown males, which lack germ cells. The construction of animals doubly mutant for brca2 and the apoptotic gene tp53 (p53) rescued brca2-dependent sex reversal. Double mutants developed oocytes and became sterile females that produced only aberrant embryos and showed elevated risk for invasive ovarian tumors. Oocytes in double-mutant females showed normal localization of brca2 and pou5f1 transcripts to the animal pole and vasa transcripts to the vegetal pole, but had a polarized rather than symmetrical nucleus with the distribution of nucleoli and chromosomes to opposite nuclear poles; this result revealed a novel role for Brca2 in establishing or maintaining oocyte nuclear architecture. Mutating tp53 did not rescue the infertility phenotype in brca2 mutant males, suggesting that brca2 plays an essential role in zebrafish spermatogenesis. Overall, this work verified zebrafish as a model for the role of Brca2 in human disease and uncovered a novel function of Brca2 in vertebrate oocyte nuclear architecture.
PLoS Genetics 03/2011; 7(3):e1001357. · 8.69 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Pedomorphism is the retention of ancestrally juvenile traits by adults in a descendant taxon. Despite its importance for evolutionary change, there are few examples of a molecular basis for this phenomenon. Notothenioids represent one of the best described species flocks among marine fishes, but their diversity is currently threatened by the rapidly changing Antarctic climate. Notothenioid evolutionary history is characterized by parallel radiations from a benthic ancestor to pelagic predators, which was accompanied by the appearance of several pedomorphic traits, including the reduction of skeletal mineralization that resulted in increased buoyancy.
We compared craniofacial skeletal development in two pelagic notothenioids, Chaenocephalus aceratus and Pleuragramma antarcticum, to that in a benthic species, Notothenia coriiceps, and two outgroups, the threespine stickleback and the zebrafish. Relative to these other species, pelagic notothenioids exhibited a delay in pharyngeal bone development, which was associated with discrete heterochronic shifts in skeletal gene expression that were consistent with persistence of the chondrogenic program and a delay in the osteogenic program during larval development. Morphological analysis also revealed a bias toward the development of anterior and ventral elements of the notothenioid pharyngeal skeleton relative to dorsal and posterior elements.
Our data support the hypothesis that early shifts in the relative timing of craniofacial skeletal gene expression may have had a significant impact on the adaptive radiation of Antarctic notothenioids into pelagic habitats.
BMC Evolutionary Biology 01/2010; 10:4. · 3.52 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Fanconi anemia (FA) is a genetic disease resulting in bone marrow failure, high cancer risks, and infertility, and developmental anomalies including microphthalmia, microcephaly, hypoplastic radius and thumb. Here we present cDNA sequences, genetic mapping, and genomic analyses for the four previously undescribed zebrafish FA genes (fanci, fancj, fancm, and fancn), and show that they reverted to single copy after the teleost genome duplication. We tested the hypothesis that FA genes are expressed during embryonic development in tissues that are disrupted in human patients by investigating fanc gene expression patterns. We found fanc gene maternal message, which can provide Fanc proteins to repair DNA damage encountered in rapid cleavage divisions. Zygotic expression was broad but especially strong in eyes, central nervous system and hematopoietic tissues. In the pectoral fin bud at hatching, fanc genes were expressed specifically in the apical ectodermal ridge, a signaling center for fin/limb development that may be relevant to the radius/thumb anomaly of FA patients. Hatching embryos expressed fanc genes strongly in the oral epithelium, a site of squamous cell carcinomas in FA patients. Larval and adult zebrafish expressed fanc genes in proliferative regions of the brain, which may be related to microcephaly in FA. Mature ovaries and testes expressed fanc genes in specific stages of oocyte and spermatocyte development, which may be related to DNA repair during homologous recombination in meiosis and to infertility in human patients. The intestine strongly expressed some fanc genes specifically in proliferative zones. Our results show that zebrafish has a complete complement of fanc genes in single copy and that these genes are expressed in zebrafish embryos and adults in proliferative tissues that are often affected in FA patients. These results support the notion that zebrafish offers an attractive experimental system to help unravel mechanisms relevant not only to FA, but also to breast cancer, given the involvement of fancj (brip1), fancn (palb2) and fancd1 (brca2) in both conditions.
Mutation Research/Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis 01/2009; 668(1-2):117-32. · 2.85 Impact Factor
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France Léveillé,
Miriam Ferrer,
Annette L Medhurst,
El Houari Laghmani,
Martin A Rooimans,
Patrick Bier,
Jurgen Steltenpool, Tom A Titus,
John H Postlethwait,
Maureen E Hoatlin,
Hans Joenje,
Johan P de Winter
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ABSTRACT: The Fanconi anemia (FA) protein FANCE is an essential component of the nuclear FA core complex, which is required for monoubiquitination of the downstream target FANCD2, an important step in the FA pathway of DNA cross-link repair. FANCE is predominantly localized in the nucleus and acts as a molecular bridge between the FA core complex and FANCD2, through direct binding of both FANCC and FANCD2. At present, it is poorly understood how the nuclear accumulation of FANCE is regulated and therefore we investigated the nuclear localization of this FA protein. We found that FANCE has a strong tendency to localize in the nucleus, since the addition of a nuclear export signal does not interfere with the nuclear localization of FANCE. We also demonstrate that the nuclear accumulation of FANCE does not rely solely on its nuclear localization signal motifs, but also on FANCC. The other FA proteins are not involved in the nuclear accumulation of FANCE, indicating a tight relationship between FANCC and FANCE, as suggested from their direct interaction. Finally, we show that the region of FANCE interacting with FANCC appears to be different from the region involved in binding FANCD2. This strengthens the idea that FANCE recruits FANCD2 to the core complex, without interfering with the binding of FANCC.
DNA Repair 06/2006; 5(5):556-65. · 4.14 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Fanconi anemia (FA) is a complex disease involving nine identified and two unidentified loci that define a network essential for maintaining genomic stability. To test the hypothesis that the FA network is conserved in vertebrate genomes, we cloned and sequenced zebrafish (Danio rerio) cDNAs and/or genomic BAC clones orthologous to all nine cloned FA genes (FANCA, FANCB, FANCC, FANCD1, FANCD2, FANCE, FANCF, FANCG, and FANCL), and identified orthologs in the genome database for the pufferfish Tetraodon nigroviridis. Genomic organization of exons and introns was nearly identical between zebrafish and human for all genes examined. Hydrophobicity plots revealed conservation of FA protein structure. Evolutionarily conserved regions identified functionally important domains, since many amino acid residues mutated in human disease alleles or shown to be critical in targeted mutagenesis studies are identical in zebrafish and human. Comparative genomic analysis demonstrated conserved syntenies for all FA genes. We conclude that the FA gene network has remained intact since the last common ancestor of zebrafish and human lineages. The application of powerful genetic, cellular, and embryological methodologies make zebrafish a useful model for discovering FA gene functions, identifying new genes in the network, and identifying therapeutic compounds.
Gene 05/2006; 371(2):211-23. · 2.34 Impact Factor
