Project description:Homozygous masterblind (mbl-/-) zebrafish exhibit reduced or absent eyes and telecephalon, and the expansion of the diencephalic fates to the front of the brain. A missense mutation in the GSK3-binding domain of zebrafish axin1, a scaffolding protein in the Wnt signaling pathway, results in the mbl phenotype. In an effort to identify and study the genes affected by Wnt signaling, we used a 14,000-oligonucleotide-gene microarray to determine differentially expressed genes in mbl/axin1 (-/-) and wild type control zebrafish embryos and larvae. Keywords: zebrafish, Danio rerio, wild-type mbl, axin1, development
Project description:Purpose: Construction of 3D zebrafish spatial transcriptomics data for studying the establishment of AP axis. Methods: We performed serial bulk RNA-seq data of zebrafish embryo at three development points. Using the published spatial transcriptomics data as references, we implemented Palette to infer spatial gene expression from bulk RNA-seq data and constructed 3D embryonic spatial transcriptomics. The constructed 3D transcriptomics data was then projected on zebrafish embryo images with 3D coordinates, establishing a spatial gene expression atlas named Danio rerio Asymmetrical Maps (DreAM). Results: DreAM provides a powerful platform for visualizing gene expression patterns on zebrafish morphology and investigating spatial cell-cell interactions. Conclusions: Our work used DreAM to explore the establishment of anteroposterior (AP) axis, and identified multiple morphogen gradients that played essential roles in determining cell AP positions. Finally, we difined a hox score, and comprehensively demonstrated the spatial collinearity of Hox genes at single-cell resolution during development.