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| Status |
Public on Nov 17, 2008 |
| Title |
The zinc finger protein Zelda plays a key role in the maternal to zygotic transition in Drosophila |
| Organism |
Drosophila melanogaster |
| Experiment type |
Expression profiling by array
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| Summary |
In all animals, the initial events of embryogenesis are controlled by maternal gene products that are deposited into the developing oocyte. At some point after fertilization, control of embryogenesis is transferred to the zygotic genome in a process called the maternal to zygotic transition (MZT). During this time maternal RNAs are degraded and zygotic RNAs are transcribed1. A long standing question has been, what factors regulate these events? The recent findings that microRNAs and Smaugs mediate maternal transcript degradation brought new life to this old problem2,3, however, the transcription factors that activate zygotic gene expression remained elusive. A clue came from the finding that many early zygotic genes in Drosophila share a cis-regulatory heptamer motif, CAGGTAG and related sequences, collectively referred to as TAG-team sites4,5. We asked whether there was a dedicated transcription factor that interacts with these sites to activate early genes. Here we report the discovery of a zinc-finger protein, Zelda (Zld) that binds specifically to TAG-team sites, and is capable of activating transcription in transient transfection assays. Mutant embryos lacking zld are defective in the cellularization process, and fail to activate the transcription of many early zygotic genes involved in cellularization, sex determination, and dorsoventral patterning. Global expression profiling confirmed that Zld plays a key role in the activation of the early zygotic genome, and suggests that Zld may also play a role in maternal RNA degradation during the MZT since many RNAs are up-regulated in the absence of Zld.
Keywords: Drosophila early embryo, MZT, transcriptional activator
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| Overall design |
Total RNA samples were extracted from three replicate collections of 1-2 hr yw and M- zld embryos by TRIzol (invitrogen). A portion of the collected embryos was fixed and stained with DAPI; 90% were in nuclear cycles 8 to13. cDNA was prepared using the GeneChip® HT One-Cycle cDNA Synthesis Kit (Manufactured by Invitrogen for Affymetrix) and labeled with the BioArray™ HighYield™ RNA Transcript Labeling Kit (Enzo). Labeled probes were hybridized to Drosophila Genome 2 Affymetrix arrays and processed by a GeneChip Fluidics Station 400. Data were acquired and normalized by the GeneChip® Scanner 3000 and processed by the Affymetrix GeneChip Operating Software (GCOS). t-test analysis was performed on the data from three biological replicates.
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| Contributor(s) |
Nien C, Liang H, Liu H, Metzstein M, Kirov N, Rushlow C |
| Citation(s) |
18931655 |
| Submission date |
Apr 21, 2008 |
| Last update date |
Aug 28, 2018 |
| Contact name |
Christine Rushlow |
| Organization name |
NYU
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| Department |
Biology
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| Street address |
100 Washington Sq.E.
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| City |
New York |
| State/province |
NY |
| ZIP/Postal code |
10003 |
| Country |
USA |
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| Platforms (1) |
| GPL1322 |
[Drosophila_2] Affymetrix Drosophila Genome 2.0 Array |
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| Samples (6)
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| Relations |
| BioProject |
PRJNA106727 |
| Supplementary file |
Size |
Download |
File type/resource |
| GSE11231_RAW.tar |
14.4 Mb |
(http)(custom) |
TAR (of CEL) |
| Processed data included within Sample table |
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