Abstract
Live imaging has been used in recent years for the understanding of dynamic processes in biology, such as embryo development. This was made possible by a combination of advancements in microscopy, leading to improved signal-to-noise ratios and better spatial and temporal resolutions, and by the development of new fluorescence markers, allowing for the quantification of protein expression and transcriptional dynamics in vivo. Here we describe a general protocol, which can be used in standard confocal microscopes to image early Drosophila melanogaster embryos, in order to learn about the transcriptional dynamics of a fluorescently labeled RNA.
Key words
- MS2 system
- Live imaging
- Confocal microscopy
- RNA
- Embryo
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options



References
Porcher A, Dostatni N (2010) The bicoid morphogen system. Curr Biol 20:R249–R254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.01.026
Jensen E (2014) Technical review: in situ hybridization. Anat Rec 297:1349–1353. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.22944
Urbanek MO, Galka-Marciniak P, Olejniczak M, Krzyzosiak WJ (2014) RNA imaging in living cells – methods and applications. RNA Biol 11:1083–1095. https://doi.org/10.4161/rna.35506
Bertrand E, Chartrand P, Schaefer M, Shenoy SM, Singer RH, Long RM (1998) Localization of ASH1 mRNA particles in living yeast. Mol Cell 2:437–445. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1097-2765(00)80143-4
Elf J, Li GW, Xie XS (2011) Probing transcription factor dynamics at the single-molecule level in a living cell. Science 316:1191–1194. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1141967
Nelles DA, Fang MY, O’Connell MR, Xu JL, Markmiller SJ, Doudna JA, Yeo GW (2016) Programmable RNA tracking in live cells with CRISPR/Cas9. Cell 165:488–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.02.054
Cusanelli E, Perez-Romero CA, Chartrand P (2013) Telomeric noncoding RNA TERRA is induced by telomere shortening to nucleate telomerase molecules at short telomeres. Mol Cell 51:780–791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2013.08.029
Bothma JP, Garcia HG, Ng S, Perry MW, Gregor T, Levine M (2015) Enhancer additivity and non-additivity are determined by enhancer strength in the Drosophila embryo. Elife 4. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07956
Desponds J, Tran H, Ferraro T, Lucas T, Perez-Romero CA, Guillou A, Fradin C, Coppey M, Dostatni N, Walczak AM (2016) Precision of readout at the hunchback gene. PLoS Comput Biol 12(12): e1005256. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005256
Bothma JP, Garcia HG, Esposito E, Schlissel G, Gregor T, Levine M (2014) Dynamic regulation of eve stripe 2 expression reveals transcriptional bursts in living Drosophila embryos. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 111:10598–10603. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1410022111
Lucas T, Ferraro T, Roelens B, De Las Heras Chanes J, Walczak AM, Coppey M, Dostatni N (2013) Live imaging of bicoid-dependent transcription in Drosophila embryos. Curr Biol 23:2135–2139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.053
Garcia HG, Tikhonov M, Lin A, Gregor T (2013) Quantitative imaging of transcription in living Drosophila embryos links polymerase activity to patterning. Curr Biol 23:2140–2145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.054
Lim B, Levine M, Yamakazi Y (2017) Transcriptional pre-patterning of Drosophila gastrulation. Curr Biol 27(2):286–290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.11.047
Esposito E, Lim B, Guessous G, Falahati H, Levine M (2016) Mitosis-associated repression in development. Genes Dev. 30(13):1503–1508. https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.281188.116
Ferraro T, Esposito E, Mancini L, Ng S, Lucas T, Coppey M, Dostatni N, Walczak AM, Levine M, Lagha M (2016) Transcriptional memory in the Drosophila embryo. Curr Biol 26:212–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.11.058
Ferraro T, Lucas T, Clémot M, De Las Heras Chanes J, Desponds J, Coppey M, Walczak AM, Dostatni N (2016) New methods to image transcription in living fly embryos: the insights so far, and the prospects. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Dev Biol 5:296–310. https://doi.org/10.1002/wdev.221
Fukaya T, Lim B, Levine M (2016) Enhancer control of transcriptional bursting. Cell 166:358–368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.05.025
Forrest KM, Gavis ER (2003) Live imaging of endogenous RNA reveals a diffusion and entrapment mechanism for nanos mRNA localization in Drosophila. Curr Biol 13:1159–1168. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(03)00451-2
Katsani KR, Karess RE, Dostatni N, Doye V (2008) In vivo dynamics of Drosophila nuclear envelope components. Mol Biol Cell 19:3652–3666. https://doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E07-11-1162
Pandey R, Heidmann S, Lehner CF (2005) Epithelial re-organization and dynamics of progression through mitosis in Drosophila separase complex mutants. J Cell Sci 118:733–742. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.01663
Linkert M, Rueden CT, Allan C, Burel J-M, Moore W, Patterson A, Loranger B, Moore J, Neves C, Macdonald D, Tarkowska A, Sticco C, Hill E, Rossner M, Eliceiri KW, Swedlow JR (2010) Metadata matters: access to image data in the real world. J Cell Biol 189:777–782. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201004104
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Patricia Le Baccon and the Imaging Facility PICT-IBiSA of the Institut Curie. This work was supported by a PSL IDEX REFLEX Grant for Mesoscopic Biology (ND, AMW, MC), an Ontario Trillium Scholarship for International Students (CAPR), a Mitacs Global Link Scholarship (CAPR) and an Internal Curie Institute Scholarship (CAPR), ARC PJA20151203341 (ND), a Mayent Rothschild sabbatical Grant from the Curie Institute (CF) and an NSERC discovery grant RGPIN/06362-15 (CF), a Marie Curie MCCIG grant No. 303561 (AMW), ANR-11-LABX-0044 DEEP Labex (ND), ANR- 11-BSV2-0024 Axomorph (ND and AMW) and PSL ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02. Cécile Fradin and Nathalie Dostatni contributed equally to this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Perez-Romero, C.A., Tran, H., Coppey, M., Walczak, A.M., Fradin, C., Dostatni, N. (2018). Live Imaging of mRNA Transcription in Drosophila Embryos. In: Dubrulle, J. (eds) Morphogen Gradients. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1863. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8772-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8772-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-8771-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-8772-6
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols