DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY 172, 699±703 (1995) RAPID COMMUNICATION View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE A Novel TGF-b-like Gene, fugacin, Speci®cally provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Expressed in the Spemann Organizer of Xenopus V. Ecochard,* C. Cayrol,*,1 F. Foulquier,* A. Zaraisky,² and A. M. Duprat* *Centre de Biologie du DeÂveloppement, UMR 9925 CNRS/Universite Paul Sabatier, af®lieÂe aÁ l'INSERM, 118 route de Narbonne, Baà t 4R3, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France; and ²Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Miklukho-Maklaja 16/10, V-437 Moscow 117871, Russia Using a differential screening strategy, we have cloned a novel Xenopus gene, fugacin, related to the transforming growth factor b superfamily. Transcripts were detected primarily in the dorsal marginal zone of late blastula. Thereafter, they became highly localized to the blastopore lip of early gastrula and were not observed at later stages. This gene, which is most homologous to the mouse gene nodal, displays a new pattern of cysteine residues. These ®ndings highlight the potential role of these growth factors during early vertebrate development. q 1995 Academic Press, Inc. INTRODUCTION like gene. Expression of this gene, which we have named fugacin, is spatially and temporally localized to the orga- The molecular basis of the spectacular organizing activity nizer region. demonstrated long ago in transplantation experiments on amphibian embryos (Spemann and Mangold, 1924) remains incompletely understood. However, the recent discovery of several potential patterning molecules has begun to yield MATERIAL AND METHODS insights into this process. In Xenopus laevis, several genes transcribed predominantly within the gastrula organizing Embryo Manipulations region have been isolated. These genes encode either puta- tive transcription factors, such as goosecoid, Xlim-1, XFKH- Embryos were staged according to Nieuwkoop and Faber 1, Pintallavis, and Xnot, or secreted proteins such as noggin (1967). and chordin (recently reviewed by Dawid, 1994; Kessler and UV-ventralized embryos were obtained by irradiating Melton, 1994). However, overlapping and functionally re- their vegetal poles for 5 min in a quartz chamber using dundant signaling systems clearly operate at many steps of UVG11 (UVP Inc., San Gabriel, CA), 20±25 min after fertil- embryonic pattern formation. To decipher such functional ization. networks of gene interactions and regulation will clearly Dorsalized embryos were obtained by 0.3 M LiCl treat- require the identi®cation and characterization of many in- ment in 10% NAM for 6 min at the 32-cell stage. volved factors. Here, we present the molecular cloning and sequence analysis of a novel transforming growth factor b (TGF-b)- Isolation of Dorso-Speci®c cDNAs cDNAs from a blastopore lip Lambda ZAP library (Blum- Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the berg et al., 1991) were excised as pBluescript SK subclones EMBL/GenBank Data Libraries under Accession No. U295880. according to Stratagene, using R408 helper phage and the 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax: (33) 61 55 XL1Blue bacterial strain. Colonies were plated onto nitro- 65 07. E-mail: [email protected] cellulose ®lters, and then duplicated ®lters were hybridized 0012-1606/95 $12.00 Copyright q 1995 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 699 / m4450$8052 11-15-95 19:21:53 dba Dev Bio 700 Rapid Communication with PCR probes enriched for dorsal (D probe)- or ventral preferential hybridization signal with a dorsally derived (V probe)-speci®c cDNAs (see below for the preparation). probe. To identify the cDNAs of interest, their reactivity to Colonies that gave a strong signal only with D probes known dorso-speci®c sequences was checked. This led us to were screened again with known dorsal-speci®c sequences. characterize three groups: ®ve clones hybridized with the Clones that did not shown hybridization were partially se- organizer-speci®c homeobox gene goosecoid, and nine others quenced and compared to the data banks. correspond to the recently identi®ed novel factor chordin (Sasai et al., 1994). The third group is represented by a single cDNA. This clone did not contain sequences corresponding Preparation of the Probes Enriched with Dorsal- to a known gene. We named this novel gene fugacin, taking and Ventral-Speci®c cDNAs its expression pattern into account. Total RNA was isolated from individual explants extir- In order to obtain a greater number of cDNAs, a further pated from the dorsal (D) or ventral (V) marginal zones at screening of the dorsal lip library was performed with a the early gastrula stage by a previously described method fugacin-derived probe. From 150,000 plaques screened, 8 (Zaraisky et al., 1992). The ®rst-strand cDNA synthesis was positive clones were selected. The longest fugacin insert, performed according to a standard protocol (Amersham) in 1.6 kb, was sequenced. The longest open reading frame en- the presence of 30 pmole of T-primer (CGCAGTCGA- codes a protein of 400 amino acids (Fig. 1A), displaying the CCG(T)13). hallmarks of the TGF-b superfamily (Fig. 1B). The predicted The cDNA ®rst strands were precipitated twice with eth- protein contains a NH2-terminal hydrophobic region sug- anol and oligo(dA)-tailed with dATP according to a standard gestive of a signal sequence for secretion and two putative protocol (Promega). PCR of the tailed D and V samples was tetrabasic processing sites (RRLRR) at residues 272 or 273. performed with T-primer exactly as described (Lukyanov et Cleavage of the precursor at these sites would be expected al., 1995). to generate a mature domain 128 or 127 amino acids in Reciprocal subtractive hybridization of D and V samples length. Alignment of the COOH-terminal Fugacin sequence was done according to the earlier published protocol (Lukya- with the corresponding region of several members of the nov et al., 1994). As a result, two samples of cDNA enriched TGF-b superfamily (Fig. 1C) shows signi®cant homologies. in dorsal or ventral sequences were obtained. Nevertheless, Fugacin displays an altered pattern of cys- teine residues. First, the seventh of the seven conserved cysteines is replaced in Fugacin by a phenylalanine. Second, Whole-Mount in Situ Hybridization the fourth cysteine is two amino acids upstream of the usual In situ hybridization was performed essentially as de- position. Such a cysteine pattern renders Fugacin unique scribed by Harland (1991), except that BM purple was used compared to the other known members of the TGF-b fam- (Boehringer) for alkaline phosphatase substrate. ily, although some variations in these positions have been Digoxigenin-labeled RNAs were prepared by in vitro tran- recently reported. In particular, the two TGF-b-related pro- scription in the presence of digoxigenin ±UTP (Boehringer), teins Vgr2/GDF3 and GDF9 (Jones et al., 1992; McPherron using T7 and T3 RNA polymerases, respectively, for anti- and Lee, 1993) lack the fourth cysteine involved in the sole sense and sense probes. disul®de linkage between subunits in other members (Schlunegger and Grutter, 1992). Further studies are needed to understand the functional signi®cance of such variations cDNA Sequencing in the cysteine pattern. Selected cDNAs were sequenced on both strands by the The in vivo expression pattern was analyzed by whole- dideoxy chain termination method (Sanger et al., 1977) us- mount in situ hybridization. Transcripts were detected at ing a Sequenase sequencing kit (from Stratagene). stage 9, following the midblastula transition (Figs. 2A and 2A1), in a region limited to the presumptive dorsal part of the embryo at the level of the equatorial zone (dorsal mar- RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ginal zone). At the onset of gastrulation (stage 10.25), the hybridization appeared to be highly localized as a narrow In an attempt to isolate new factors potentially involved ring of staining at the top of the dorsal blastopore lip (Figs. in conferring organizer activity, we performed a differential 2B and 2B1). Some faint punctate staining can be observed screen for zygotic dorsal-speci®c cDNAs of a dorsal lip cDNA in the dorsal endodermal region of embryos. As gastrulation library derived from stage 10.25 Xenopus gastrula (Blumberg progresses, the signal decreases abruptly: subsequently, no et al., 1991). Probes were prepared from one explant of either staining was detected either in the horseshoe-shaped blasto- the dorsal or the ventral marginal zone of a stage 10.25 gas- pore-stage embryos or in later stages (neurula and tailbud). trula by a PCR-based method. In order to increase the screen- To re®ne the localization of stained cells, stage 10.25 em- ing ef®ciency, the probes were enriched in either dorsal- or bryos were sectioned after whole-mount in situ hybridiza- ventral-speci®c cDNAs by subtractive hybridization as de- tion. Cells composing the external layer at the top of the scribed under Material and Methods. After an initial differen- forming blastopore lip are stained, while no staining was tial screening of 10,000 colonies, 15 clones showed a clear observed in deeper cell layers (Fig. 2E). Copyright q 1995 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. / m4450$8052 11-15-95 19:21:53 dba Dev Bio Rapid Communication / m4450$8052 11-15-95 19:21:53 dba Dev Bio Copyright q 1995 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. FIG. 1. Sequence of Fugacin and comparison with the TGF-b superfamily. (A) The deduced amino acid sequence of the longest fugacin cDNA clone is shown. A putative signal sequence is underlined and the potential cleavage site is boxed. Cysteines within the mature domain are marked by asterisks. (B) Structural representation of the TGF-b superfamily members (Kingsley, 1994).