Optogenetic investigation of BMP target gene expression diversity
Abstract
Signaling molecules activate distinct patterns of gene expression to coordinate embryogenesis, but how spatiotemporal expression diversity is generated is an open question. In zebrafish, a BMP signaling gradient patterns the dorsal-ventral axis. We systematically identified target genes responding to BMP and found that they have diverse spatiotemporal expression patterns. Transcriptional responses to optogenetically delivered high- and low-amplitude BMP signaling pulses indicate that spatiotemporal expression is not fully defined by different BMP signaling activation thresholds. Additionally, we observed negligible correlations between spatiotemporal expression and transcription kinetics for the majority of analyzed genes in response to BMP signaling pulses. In contrast, spatial differences between BMP target genes largely collapsed when FGF and Nodal signaling were inhibited. Our results suggest that, similar to other patterning systems, combinatorial signaling is likely to be a major driver of spatial diversity in BMP-dependent gene expression in zebrafish.
Data availability
The RNA-sequencing data has been deposited at the GEO repository (accession number: GSE135100) and can be accessed at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE135100. Image quantification data is available in the accompanying source data files.
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Identification of BMP-regulated genes in early gastrulation stage zebrafish embryosNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE135100.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Max Planck Society
- Patrick Müller
HFSP (CDA-00031/2013-C)
- Patrick Müller
European Research Council (637840 (QUANTPATTERN))
- Patrick Müller
European Research Council (863952 (ACE-OF-SPACE))
- Patrick Müller
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Rogers et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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