Title
Reverse genetic screening reveals poor correlation between morpholino-induced and mutant phenotypes in zebrafish
UMMS Affiliation
Department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology
Publication Date
2015-01-12
Document Type
Article
Subjects
Animals; Blotting, Western; Deoxyribonucleases; Gene Expression Regulation; Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; Gene Knockdown Techniques; Morpholinos; Mutation; Oligonucleotides, Antisense; Phenotype; RNA, Messenger; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Zebrafish; Zebrafish Proteins
Disciplines
Cancer Biology | Developmental Biology | Embryonic Structures | Molecular Genetics
Abstract
The widespread availability of programmable site-specific nucleases now enables targeted gene disruption in the zebrafish. In this study, we applied site-specific nucleases to generate zebrafish lines bearing individual mutations in more than 20 genes. We found that mutations in only a small proportion of genes caused defects in embryogenesis. Moreover, mutants for ten different genes failed to recapitulate published Morpholino-induced phenotypes (morphants). The absence of phenotypes in mutant embryos was not likely due to maternal effects or failure to eliminate gene function. Consistently, a comparison of published morphant defects with the Sanger Zebrafish Mutation Project revealed that approximately 80% of morphant phenotypes were not observed in mutant embryos, similar to our mutant collection. Based on these results, we suggest that mutant phenotypes become the standard metric to define gene function in zebrafish, after which Morpholinos that recapitulate respective phenotypes could be reliably applied for ancillary analyses.
DOI of Published Version
10.1016/j.devcel.2014.11.018
Source
Dev Cell. 2015 Jan 12;32(1):97-108. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2014.11.018. Epub 2014 Dec 18. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Developmental cell
Related Resources
PubMed ID
25533206
Repository Citation
Kok, Fatma O.; Shin, Masahiro; Ni, Chih-Wen; Gupta, Ankit; Grosse, Ann S.; van Impel, Andreas; Kirchmaier, Bettina C.; Peterson-Maduro, Josi; Kourkoulis, George; Male, Ira; DeSantis, Dana F.; Sheppard, Sarah; Ebarasi, Lwaki; Betsholtz, Christer; Schulte-Merker, Stefan; Wolfe, Scot A.; and Lawson, Nathan D., "Reverse genetic screening reveals poor correlation between morpholino-induced and mutant phenotypes in zebrafish" (2015). Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology Publications. 17.
https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/mccb_pubs/17