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Chicken β-globin insulators fail to shield the nkx2.5 promoter from integration site effects in zebrafish

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Abstract

Genetic lineage tracing and conditional mutagenesis are developmental genetics techniques reliant on precise tissue-specific expression of transgenes. In the mouse, high specificity is usually achieved by inserting the transgene into the locus of interest through homologous recombination in embryonic stem cells. In the zebrafish, DNA containing the transgenic construct is randomly integrated into the genome, usually through transposon-mediated transgenesis. Expression of such transgenes is affected by regulatory features surrounding the integration site from general accessibility of chromatin to tissue-specific enhancers. We tested if the 1.2 kb cHS4 insulators derived from the chicken β-globin locus can shield a transgene from chromosomal position effects in the zebrafish genome. As our test promoters, we used two different-length versions of the zebrafish nkx2.5. We found that flanking a transgenic construct by cHS4 insulation sequences leads to overall increase in the expression of nkx2.5:mRFP. However, we also observed a very high degree of variability of mRFP expression, indicating that cHS4 insulators fail to protect nkx2.5:mRFP from falling under the control of enhancers in the vicinity of integration site.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Any Wilber for sharing the plasmid containing CHS4 insulators. We thank NIH (Grant HD061749) for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Viktorija Grajevskaja, Jorune Balciuniene & Darius Balciunas

  2. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Viktorija Grajevskaja

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  1. Viktorija Grajevskaja
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  2. Jorune Balciuniene
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  3. Darius Balciunas
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Correspondence to Darius Balciunas.

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Communicated by T. S. Becker.

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Grajevskaja, V., Balciuniene, J. & Balciunas, D. Chicken β-globin insulators fail to shield the nkx2.5 promoter from integration site effects in zebrafish. Mol Genet Genomics 288, 717–725 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-013-0778-0

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