A globin-family protein, cytoglobin 1, is involved in the development of neural crest-derived tissues and organs in zebrafish.

A globin-family protein, cytoglobin 1, is involved in the development of neural crest-derived tissues and organs in zebrafish. Dev Biol. 2020 Dec 22;: Authors: Takahashi K, Ito Y, Yoshimura M, Nikaido M, Yuikawa T, Kawamura A, Tsuda S, Kage D, Yamasu K Abstract The zebrafish is an excellent model animal that is amenable to forward genetics approaches. To uncover unknown developmental regulatory mechanisms in vertebrates, we conducted chemical mutagenesis screening and identified a novel mutation, kanazutsi (kzt). This mutation is recessive, and its homozygotes are embryonic lethal. Mutant embryos suffered from a variety of morphological defects, such as head flattening, pericardial edema, circulation defects, disrupted patterns of melanophore distribution, dwarf eyes, a defective jaw, and extensive apoptosis in the head, which indicates that the main affected tissues are derived from neural crest cells (NCCs). The expression of tissue-specific markers in kzt mutants showed that the early specification of NCCs was normal, but their later differentiation was severely affected. The mutation was mapped to chromosome 3 by linkage analyses, near cytoglobin 1 (cygb1), the product of which is a globin-family respiratory protein. cygb1 expression was activated during somitogenesis in somites and cranial NCCs in wild-type embryos but was significantly downregulated in mutant embryos, despite the normal primary structure of the gene product. Th...
Source: Developmental Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Tags: Dev Biol Source Type: research