Abstract
Otospiralin (OTOSP) is a small protein of unknown function, expressed in fibrocytes of the inner ear and required for normal cochlear auditory function. Despite its conservation from fish to mammals, expression of otospiralin was only investigated in mammals. Here, we report for the first time the expression profile of OTOS orthologous genes in zebrafish (Danio rerio): otospiralin and si:ch73-23l24.1 (designated otospiralin-like). In situ hybridization analyses in zebrafish embryos showed a specific expression of otospiralin-like in notochord (from 14 to 48 hpf) and similar expression patterns for otospiralin and otospiralin-like in gut (from 72 to 120 hpf), swim bladder (from 96 to 120 hpf) and inner ear (at 120 hpf). Morpholino knockdown of otospiralin and otospiralin-like showed no strong change of the body structure of the embryos at 5 dpf and the inner ear was normally formed. Nevertheless, knockdown embryos showed a reduced number of kinocilia in the lateral crista, indicating that these genes play an important role in kinocilium formation. RT-qPCR revealed that otospiralin is highly expressed in adult zebrafish inner ear comparing to the others analyzed tissues as previously shown for mice. Interestingly, otospiralin-like was not detected in the inner ear which suggests that otospiralin have a more important function in hearing than otospiralin-like. Phylogenetic analysis of otospiralin proteins in vertebrates indicated the presence of two subgroups and supported the functional divergence observed in zebrafish for otospiralin and otospiralin-like genes. This study offers the first insight into the expression of otospiralin and otospiralin-like in zebrafish. Expression data point to an important role for otospiralin in zebrafish hearing and a specific role for otospiralin-like in notochord vacuolization.
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27 January 2020
In the originally published article, the first names and family names of the authors were interchanged, hence not correct. The correct presentation of names is presented above.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Christelle Etard and Volker Middel for their kind advice and Nathalie Decker for technical assistance. We also thank Pr. Hela Azaiez for proofreading the English language manuscript. We acknowledge PASRI/MOBIDOC program (funded by EU) and PAQ-PAES (T1-PAS7) program for the financial support to Dr. Aissette Baanannou.
Funding
This study was co-funded by the Tunisian Ministry for Higher Education and Scientific Research and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (TUNGER15-046 project).
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The care and use of animals were in accordance with the international guidelines on the protection of experimental animals. Because embryos used in this work were no more than 5 days old, no license was required by Council of Europe (Directive 2010/63/EU) or the local authority.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Communicated by Matthias Hammerschmidt
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The original version of this article was revised: In the originally published article, the first names and family names of the authors were interchanged, hence not correct. The correct presentation of names is presented above.
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Baanannou, A., Rastegar, S., Bouzid, A. et al. Gene duplication and functional divergence of the zebrafish otospiralin genes. Dev Genes Evol 230, 27–36 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-019-00642-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-019-00642-8