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Genome Editing in Ascidians

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Abstract

Genome editing has the potential to provide new approaches to investigate biological questions, and can provide simpler experimental approaches than more established techniques. Tunicates are a group of diverse marine organisms found in seas throughout the world. Tunicates, and in particular, ascidians are attractive model organisms, particularly for the experimental study of early animal development due to the relative simplicity of development, and the wide range of experimental techniques available, particularly for Ciona intestinalis. In this chapter we will discuss the current state of techniques for performing gene knockdowns or knockouts in ascidians and describe the recent progress in using recently developed genome editing technologies utilizing custom nucleases. These new experimental approaches are particularly suited to investigating the later stages of ascidian development, after the tailbud embryo has formed, and have the potential to open up exciting new opportunities to understand the unknown processes of animal development.

Keywords

Ascidians Ciona CRISPR/Cas9 Genome editing TALENs Zinc finger nuclease 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank members in Shimoda Marine Research Center, University of Tsukuba for their help to support our research. This study was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to YS. YS was supported by the Toray Science and Technology Grant. Further support was provided by grants from the National Bioresource Project.

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© Springer Japan 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Shimoda Marine Research CenterUniversity of TsukubaShimodaJapan

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