Abstract
Our study was aimed to investigate the effects of lgals3a (Gal-3 encoding gene) on the development of zebrafish embryo and its underlying mechanisms. Morpholino (MO) technology was used to inhibit the expression of zebrafish lgals3a, and the effect of lgals3a gene knockdown on zebrafish embryo development and the number of monocyte macrophages was observed. Effect of lgals3a-e3i3-MO on apoptosis of zebrafish was detected by acridine orange staining. In addition, the mRNA expression levels of Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway-related genes were detected by RT-qPCR. Compared with control-MO group, the zebrafish embryos injected with lgals3a-e3i3-MO had obvious defects in the head, eyes, and tail, and pericardial edema. Lgals3a-e3i3-MO significantly reduced the number of mononuclear macrophages in zebrafish embryos compared with the control-MO group. The results of acridine orange staining showed that compared with the control-MO group, lgals3a-e3i3-MO promoted cardiomyocyte apoptosis in zebrafish. Furthermore, lgals3a-e3i3-MO significantly up-regulated the expression of dkk1b, wnt9a, lrp5, fzd7a, β-catenin, Gsk-3β, mycn, myca in the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, and decreased the expression of lef1. These results indicate that lgals3a-e3i3-MO inhibits zebrafish embryo development, reduces the number of mononuclear macrophages, activates Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway and promotes cardiomyocyte apoptosis.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 81500331] and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai [grant number 17140902600].
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CW conceived and designed the study. KC, CW, YF, JG, ZH, YW, HZ, CM and LG performed the main experiments and analyzed the data. KC and CW wrote the manuscript. All the authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Chen, K., Fan, Y., Gu, J. et al. Effect of lgals3a on embryo development of zebrafish. Transgenic Res 30, 739–750 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-021-00276-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-021-00276-5