Ventralized Zebrafish Embryo Rescue by Overexpression of Zic2a
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ZEBRAFISH Volume 1, Number 3, 2004 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Ventralized Zebrafish Embryo Rescue by Overexpression of Zic2a EVDOKIA DODOU,1 KATE F. BARALD,2 and JOHN H. POSTLETHWAIT1 ABSTRACT The neuroectoderm arises during gastrulation as a population of undifferentiated proliferating neuroepithelial cells. As development continues, neuroepithelial cells leave the cell cycle and differentiate into neurons and glia of the functioning central nervous system. What processes establish the spatial distribution of proliferating neu- roepithelial cells? To investigate this question, zic2a was isolated from zebrafish, a homolog of the Drosophila pair-rule gene odd-paired, which is involved in nervous system patterning. At shield stage, zic2a was expressed in the zebrafish organizer and the blastoderm margin, and became restricted to the axial mesoderm in mid-gas- trula. Expression of zic2a appeared in the prospective neuroectoderm during gastrulation, and later demarcated the presumptive forebrain. This expression pattern suggests that zic2a may function early in the organizer and later in the neural plate to demarcate the population of proliferating neuroectoderm. Consistent with a function for zic2a in transducing signals from the organizer, overexpression of zic2a resulted in an expansion of prolifer- ating neuroectoderm. Furthermore, zic2a overexpression rescued the ventralized phenotype of chordino mutant embryos, which lack a functional chordin gene. Early expression of zic2 in the zebrafish organizer, and the phe- notype resulting from overexpression, show a role for zic2a downstream of chordin or other secreted organizer proteins in establishing the initial size of the population of neuroectoderm cells. INTRODUCTION system. The formation of the neuroectoderm from the dorsal ectoderm depends on induc- he vertebrate central nervous system con- tive signals from the dorsal organizer at the Ttains multipotent precursor cells capable of early gastrula stage and secreted factors from differentiating into a variety of neuronal and the ventral portion of the embryo. glial fates.1,2 Because neural stem cells initially In Xenopus, dorsalizing signals that originate arise by processes that drive normal embryonic from the organizer include Noggin, Follistatin, development, and these embryonic mecha- Nodal-related-3 (Xnr3), Chordin, and Grem- nisms may persist in later life to help control lin.4–8 These signals act by antagonizing the se- reserve cells that maintain homeostasis of the creted Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs), central nervous system after perturbation from which play a role in the specification of non- disease or injury,3 it is important to understand neural, ventral cell fates in Xenopus9,10 and ze- the initial developmental processes that estab- brafish.11–14 Not only do these secreted BMP lish the extent of the embryonic central nervous antagonists play an important role in the early 1Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. 2Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Supported by NIH grants R01RR10715 and P01HD22486 (JHP), and NIH NIH/NIDCD, RO1 DC04184 and NIH/NIDCD, R01 DC05939 (KFB). The authors thank the NIH (1-G20-RR11724), NSF (STI-9602828), M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust (96127:JVZ:02/27/97), and W. M. Keck Foundation (961582) for supporting renovation of the University of Oregon Zebrafish Facility. 239 240 DODOU ET AL. stages of embryonic axis specification, they also zic2a in the specification hierarchy of dorsoven- help to specify other organ systems that de- tral patterning, we expressed zic2a in ventral- pend on symmetry, including the developing ized chordino mutants. Results showed that zic2a vertebrate inner ear.15 Follistatin and Chordin rescued these ventralized mutant embryos. antagonize BMP4 activity by physically associ- Based on the expression pattern of zic2a, the ef- ating with BMP4, thereby blocking the binding fects of zic2a overexpression in wild-type em- of BMP4 to its receptor.16–18 Genetic evidence bryos, and the ability of zic2a message to res- for this interaction also exists in zebrafish: the cue ventralized mutant embryos, we propose ventralized mutant, chordino (dino),19 lacks a that zic2a functions in promoting dorsal cell functional chordin gene,20 but dino interacts ge- fates and increasing the size of the proliferat- netically with the dorsalized mutant swirl,21,22 ing prospective neural-plus-glial cell popula- which contains a mutation in the bmp2b tion. gene.11,13 Members of the Zic gene family are good candidates to function downstream of Chordin MATERIALS AND METHODS and BMPs. In Xenopus, Zic1 was cloned as a downstream target of Chordin.23 Chick Zic1, 2, Library Screening and 3 genes are widely expressed in the cen- A cDNA library prepared from 6–10 hpf em- tral nervous system, neural crest, and inner bryos (provided by B.W. Draper, unpublished.) ear, where Chordin-expressing cells are found was screened by degenerate PCR. The primers to interdigitate with longitudinal stripes of were designed with the application CODEHOP Zic1-expressing cells in the hindbrain.24 Verte- available in the BLOCKS web server (www. brate Zic genes encode zinc-finger transcription blocks.fhcrc.org) of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer factors of the Gli super-family, thought to be Research Center in Seattle, WA. The primers involved in patterning the neural tube.25–29 Ze- were: zic2-F: CCCCGGCGCCTTCTTYMGN- brafish zic1 is strongly expressed in the pre- TAYATG and zic2-R: GGGCAAAGATCTTCC- sumptive forebrain at mid-gastrula.30 We re- CRCANCCNGG. The annealing temperature ported the isolation of zebrafish zic2a (GenBank was 57°C, salt concentration 3mM and primer Accession number AF151535, submitted 14- concentration 1M. The expected product is May-1999) and this gene was independently 317 bp and spans the five zinc finger domains. isolated by Grinblat and Sive,31 and Toyama et Screening this cDNA library in a gridded for- al.32 recently isolated an additional zic2 para- mat provided a full length zic2a clone. The full log, zic2b (zic2.2). length zic2a cDNA (3132 bp long) was flanked To more fully understand the role of zic2 in by untranslated regions of 347 bp at the 5 prime dorsoventral patterning and to define how zic2 and 1447 bp at the 3 prime side. The accession fits into the regulatory network that controls number for zic2a is AF151535. cell fate decisions in the early gastrula, we pre- sent data indicating that zebrafish zic2a func- Whole-Mount in Situ Hybridization tions in early processes specifying the dorso- ventral axis and the size of the neural plate. We Expression analysis was performed essen- show that zic2a is expressed in the organizer re- tially as in Oxtoby and Jowett.33 Two-color in gion of the early gastrula, and zic2a transcripts situ hybridizations were performed according persist in the presumptive axial mesendoderm to Jowett and Yan.34 To make zic2a probe for in until the end of gastrulation. This expression situ hybridizations, zic2a 3ЈUTR sequences (nt. pattern suggests the hypothesis that zic2a may 1795 to 2983), which should be gene-specific be involved in organizer function at this early and different from other paralogs, were ampli- stage in zebrafish development. To test this hy- fied with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) pothesis, zic2a was overexpressed in zebrafish using gene-specific primers (F: GCGTCTAG- embryos, and we discovered that this treatment ACCTACATCGACAGAAGAAACG (nt. 1795 dorsalized wild-type zebrafish embryos, ex- to 1815, with an XbaI site at the 5Ј), R: GC- panding the neuroectodermal domain. To place CAAGCTTCTGACAGCTCTTAGTTTTGCG Zic2a OVEREXPRESSION 241 (nt. 2983 to 2963, with an XbaI site at the 5Ј). traub, unpublished results). In vitro transcrip- The PCR fragment was digested with XbaI/ tion was performed with the SP6 MESSAGE HindIII and cloned into XbaI/HindIII-digested MACHINE kit (Ambion, Austin, TX) according KSϩ Bluescript vector. Antisense RNA probes to manufacturer’s instructions. After removal were synthesized from cDNA encoding zic2a of DNA template by treatment with RNase-free (this paper), zic1,30 krox20,33 foxd3,35 dlx3b,36 DNase, the mRNAs were purified with RNeasy gata1,37 pax2a,38 gsc,39 and chordin.20 Mini Kit (QIAGEN, Valencia, CA) and dis- solved in RNase-free water. About 25 pg of Zebrafish Strains capped mRNA was injected per embryo. Wild-type (AB, C32, WIK, SJD) and mutant Mapping and Linkage Analysis zebrafish (Danio rerio) were obtained from the University of Oregon Zebrafish Facility. Mu- The zic2a gene was mapped by designing Ј tants were obtained from intercrosses of heter- specific primers to amplify the 3 untranslated ozygous carriers.40 Embryos were maintained region (forward:GCGTCTAGACAAGTGTAC- at 28.5°C and staged by hours (h) or days (d) AATCTTTACAAC, reverse:GCCAAGCTTGA- postfertilization using standard morphological TAATTCAGCGCTATCTGC). These primers criteria.41 The following ENU-induced muta- were used to amplify members of a doubled tions identified in the Tübingen mutagenesis haploid mapping panel,47 and a polymorphism screen42 were used: dino (tt250),19 a recessive was detected by single strand conformation lethal mutation caused by a small 104-bp dele- polymorphism (SSCP)48 and compared to sev- tion in the zebrafish ortholog of chordin;20 swirl eral thousand other DNA polymorphisms pre- (ta72)22 is a zygotic semidominant mutation viously scored on this panel.47 Map positions caused by a single base-pair change in the stop were determined by using Map Manager,49 codon of bmp2b;13 snailhouse (ty68a)22 is a hy- http://mcbio.med.buffalo.edu/mapmgr.html). pomorphic mutation that displays a Val Ǟ Gly substitution in a conserved motif of the Bmp7 prodomain.43,44 RESULTS Phylogenetic and Genomic Analyses Isolation and Phylogenetic Analysis of the Zebrafish zic2a Gene Sequences for phylogenetic analysis were col- lected using the tblastn search program of NCBI To address the role of zic2 in ectodermal pat- BLAST (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgi bin/ terning, we cloned a zebrafish ortholog of the BLAST/nph-newblast) to find amino acid se- vertebrate Zic2 gene using redundant primers quences similar to zebrafish zic2a.