Gene Expression Patterns最新文献

Foxl2 plays conserved central function in ovarian differentiation and maintenance in several fish species. However, its expression pattern and function in fish embryogenesis are still largely unknown. In this study, we first presented a sequential expression pattern of zebrafish foxl2a and foxl2b during embryo development. They were predominantly expressed in the cranial paraxial mesoderm (CPM) and cranial venous vasculature (CVV) during somitogenesis and subsequently expressed in the pharyngeal arches after 48 h post-fertilization (hpf). Then, we compared the brain structures among zebrafish wildtype (WT) and three homozygous foxl2 mutants (foxl2a^−/−, foxl2b^−/− and foxl2a^−/−;foxl2b^−/−) and found the reduction of the fourth ventricle in the three foxl2 mutants, especially in foxl2a^−/−;foxl2b^−/− mutant. Finally, we detected several key transcription factors involved in the gene regulatory network of midbrain-hindbrain boundary (MHB) patterning, such as wnt1, en1b and pax2a. Their expression levels were obviously downregulated in MHB of foxl2a^−/− and foxl2a^−/−;foxl2b^−/− mutants. Thus, we suggest that Foxl2a and Foxl2b are involved in MHB and the fourth ventricle development in zebrafish. The current study provides insights into the molecular mechanism underlying development of brain ventricular system.

Background

As a newly discovered muscle factor secreted by skeletal muscle cells, irisin is a polypeptide fragment formed from hydrolysis of fibronectin type Ⅲ domain-containing protein 5 (FNDC5). Irisin can promote beigeing of white adipose tissue (WAT) and regulate glucose and lipid metabolisms. However, the functions of irisin in skeletal muscle development remain largely unknown. In order to characterize the expression of irisin, this study investigated the expression of irisin precursor FNDC5 in myoblasts and skeletal muscles during different developmental stages of SPF mice.

Results

The Western blot, quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and immunofluorescence assay results showed that FNDC5 was expressed in all the developmental stages of myoblasts and gastrocnemius, but its expression differed at different stages. FNDC5 protein exhibited the highest expression in gastrocnemius of sexually mature mice, followed by elderly mice and adolescent mice, and it displayed the lowest expression in pups. Additionally, FNDC5 protein was mainly expressed in cytoplasm, and it had the highest expression in primary myoblasts, followed by the myotubes with the lowest expression in C2C12 myogenic cells.

Conclusions

Overall, FNDC5 was mainly expressed in cytoplasm and extracellular matrix with different expression levels at different developmental stages of skeletal muscle cells and tissues in mice. This study will provide new strategies for promoting skeletal muscle development and treating muscle- and metabolism-related disease by using irisin.

Generally, automatic image annotation can offer semantic graphics for recognizing image contents, and it creates a base for devising various techniques, which can search images in a huge dataset. Although most existing techniques mainly focus on resolving annotation issues through sculpting tag semantic information and visual image content, it ignores additional information, like picture positions and descriptions. The established Exponential Sailfish Optimizer-based Generative Adversarial Networks are therefore used to provide an efficient approach for image annotation (ESFO-based GAN). By combining Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) and Sailfish Optimizer (SFO), the ESFO is a newly created design that is used to train the GAN classifier. Additionally, the Grabcut is presented to successfully do image annotation by extracting the background and foreground images. Additionally, DeepJoint segmentation is used to divide apart the images based on the background image that was extracted. Finally, image annotation is successfully accomplished with the aid of GAN. As a result, image annotation uses the produced ESFO-based GAN's subsequent results. The developed approach exhibited enhanced outcomes with maximum F-Measure of 98.37%, maximum precision of 97.02%, and maximal recall of 96.64%, respectively, using the flicker dataset.

Bone morphogenetic protein 2 plays an important role in the regulation of osteoblast proliferation and differentiation. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the bmp2 ortholog evolved from the same ancestral gene family in vertebrates and was duplicated in teleost, which were named bmp2a and bmp2b. The results of whole-mount in situ hybridization showed that the expression locations of bmp2a and bmp2b in zebrafish were different in different periods (24 hpf, 48 hpf, 72 hpf), which revealed potential functional differentiation between bmp2a and bmp2b. Phenotypic analysis showed that bmp2a mutations caused partial rib and vertebral deformities in zebrafish, while bmp2b^−/− embryos died massively after 12 hpf due to abnormal somite formation. We further explored the expression pattern changes of genes (bmp2a, bmp2b, smad1, fgf4, runx2b, alp) related to skeletal development at different developmental stages (20 dpf, 60 dpf, 90 dpf) in wild-type and bmp2a^−/− zebrafish. The results showed that the expression of runx2b in bmp2a^−/− was significantly downregulated at three stages and the expression of other genes were significantly downregulated at 90 dpf compared with wild-type zebrafish. The study revealed functional differentiation of bmp2a and bmp2b in zebrafish embryonic and skeletal development.

As a crucial member of the Hedgehog (Hh) protein family, desert hedgehog (dhh) plays a vital role in multiple developmental processes, cell differentiation and tissue homeostasis. However, it is unclear how it regulates development in fish. In this study, we cloned and characterized the dhh gene from Pseudopleuronectes yokohamae. The full-length cDNA of Pydhh comprises 3194 bp, with a 1386 bp open reading frame (ORF) that encodes a polypeptide of 461 amino acids with a typical HH-signal domain, Hint-N and Hint-C domains. Multiple sequence alignment revealed that the putative PyDHH protein sequence was highly conserved across species, especially in the typical domains. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the PyDHH clustered within the Pleuronectiformes. Real-time quantitative PCR showed that Pydhh was detected in fourteen different tissues in adult-female and adult-male marbled flounder, and nine different tissues in juvenile fish. During early embryonic development stages, the expression of Pydhh was revealed high levels at hatching stage of embryo development. Moreover, the relative expression of Pydhh was significantly higher in the juvenile liver than adults’, and higher in the female skin than the male skin. To further investigate its location, the in situ hybridization (ISH) assay was performed, the results showed that the hybridization signal was obviously expressed in the immune organs of Pseudopleuronectes yokohamae, with weak signal expression in the other tissues. Our results suggested that Pydhh is highly conserved among species and plays a vital role in embryonic development and formation of immune related organs.

Patched (Ptch) is a receptor in the hedgehog signaling pathway, essential for animal development. Our previous study showed that ptch1 gene participates in the maintenance of the male germline and spermatogenesis in Cynoglossus semilaevis (csptch1). In this study, we identified a patched1 gene homolog (csptch1 x1). The csptch1 x1 gene is 5761 bp long, with a 4638 bp coding sequence that encodes 1545 amino acids. The Csptch1 x1 protein has 12 transmembrane regions and sterol-sensing domains and is highly homologous to the csptch1 (91 amino acids difference). Expression pattern analysis showed that csptch1 x1 is expressed in eight different tissues of adult tongue sole, and the expression is significantly higher in tissues of female than that in male tissues. The expression pattern in developmental stages was also analyzed. csptch1 x1 could be detected at the 1-cell stage and was highly expressed at the blastocyst, somite, and blastopore closing stages, implying that it participates in cell differentiation. In ovarian development, the expression of csptch1 x1 was initiated at 20 days after hatching (dah) and was significantly high at 35–50 and 95–150 dah. In situ hybridization showed that csptch1 x1 was predominantly expressed in primordial germ cells, oocytes, and follicular cells, but the expression of the gene was lower in the testis. These results suggest that csptch1 x1 may be mainly involved in female differentiation and ovarian development, different from the role of csptch1 in spermatogenesis.

Recently, with most mobile phones coming with dual cameras, stereo image super-resolution is becoming increasingly popular in phones and other modern acquisition devices, leading stereo super-resolution images spread widely on the Internet. However, current image forensics methods are carried out in monocular images, and high false positive rate appears when detecting stereo super-resolution images by these methods. Therefore, it is important to develop stereo super-resolution image detection method. In this paper, a convolutional neural network with multi-scale feature extraction and hierarchical feature fusion is proposed to detect the stereo super-resolution images. Multi-atrous convolutions are employed to extract multi-scale features and be adapt for varying stereo super-resolution images, and hierarchical feature fusion further improve the performance and robustness of the model. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed network can detect stereo super-resolution images effectively and achieve strong generalization and robustness. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first attempt to investigate the performance of current forensics methods when tested under stereo super-resolution images, and represent the first study of stereo super-resolution images detection. We believe that it can raise the awareness about the security of stereo super-resolution images.

Nel is a multimeric extracellular glycoprotein which predominantly expressed in the nervous system and play an important role in neural development and functions. There are three nel paralogues included nell2a, nell2b, and nell3 in zebrafish, while systematic expression analysis of the nel family is still lacking. In this study, we performed a phylogenetic analysis on 7 species, in different species the nell2a are highly conserved, as is nell2b. Then, the expression profiles of nell2a, nell2b and nell3 were detected by in situ hybridization in zebrafish embryo, and the result showed that nel genes highly enriched in the central nervous system, but distributed in different regions of the brain. In addition, nell2a is also expressed in the olfactory pit, spinal cord, otic vesicle and retina (ganglion cell layer), nell2b was detected to express in gill arches, olfactory epithelium, olfactory pit, spinal cord, photoreceptor and retina (ganglion cell layer), it should be noted that the expression of nell3 is special, was only detected at 96 hpf in the brain and spinal cord of zebrafish. Overall, our results indicate that nell2a and nell2b genes are expressed in the nervous system and eyes of zebrafish embryo, while nell3 is expressed in different regions in the nervous system. The phylogenetic analysis also shows that nell3 sequences are significantly different from nell2a and nell2b. This study provides new evidence to better understand the role of nel in zebrafish embryo development.

Inka box actin regulator 1 (Inka1) is a novel protein identified in Xenopus and is found in vertebrates. While Inka1 is required for facial skeletal development in Xenopus and zebrafish, it is dispensable in mice despite its conserved expression in the cranial neural crest, indicating that Inka1 function in facial skeletal development is not conserved among vertebrates. Zebrafish bears two paralogs of inka1 (inka1a and inka1b) in the genome, with the biological roles of inka1b barely known. Here, we analyzed the expression and function of inka1b during facial skeletal development in zebrafish. inka1b was expressed sequentially in the head mesoderm adjacent to the pharyngeal pouches essential for facial skeletal development at the stage of arch segmentation. However, a loss-of-function mutation in inka1b displayed normal head development, including the pouches and facial cartilages. The normal head of inka1b mutant fish was unlikely a result of the genetic redundancy of inka1b with inka1a, given the distinct expression of inka1a and inka1b in the cranial neural crest and head mesoderm, respectively, during craniofacial development. Our findings suggest that the inka1b expression in the head mesoderm might not be essential for head development in zebrafish.