Expression pattern of a β₂ tubulin gene in zebrafish embryos identified by whole mountin situ hybridization

Abstract

Zebrafish is a good vertebrate model for development studies. Research on gene expression and regulation during zebrafish embryonic development plays an important role in revealing the molecular mechanism of morphogenesis in vertebrate. Tubulin locates the cytoplasmic determinants in eggs, organizes the formation of basic cytoskeleton and controls various cell movements. There are several types of tubulin, each of which has specific expression regions and functions. In this study, the full-length cDNA of aXenopus β₂ tubulin was used as template to generate Dig-labeled antisense RNA which was used as a probe to carry outin situ hybridization on whole mount zebrafish embryos. Under the experimental conditions, the tubulin transcript was first detected in a group of cells in embryos at the midblastula stage. With the development of the embryo, this transcript was gradually restricted to the nervous system. These results demonstrate that the expression of this β₂ tubulin gene in zebrafish embryos is neural specific.