Article
- The EMBO Journal (2007) 26, 3945 - 3956
- doi:10.1038/sj.emboj.7601821
Published online: 16 August 2007
Subject Categories:
The TATA-binding protein regulates maternal mRNA degradation and differential zygotic transcription in zebrafishEMBO Open
Marco Ferg1,a, Remo Sanges2,4,a, Jochen Gehrig1, Janos Kiss3, Matthias Bauer1, Agnes Lovas5, Monika Szabo3, Lixin Yang1, Uwe Straehle1, Michael J Pankratz1, Ferenc Olasz3, Elia Stupka2,4 and Ferenc Müller1
- Institute of Toxicology and Genetics, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
- Bioinformatics–CBM Scrl, AREA Science Park, Basovizza, Trieste, Italy
- Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Gödöllõ, Hungary
- CBM, AREA Science Park, Basovizza, Trieste, Italy
- Leibniz Institute for Age Research, Jena, Germany
Correspondence to:
Elia Stupka, Bioinformatics–CBM Scrl, AREA Science Park, ss 14 km 163.5-Basovizza, Trieste 34012, Italy. E-mail: elia.stupka@cbm.fvg.it
Ferenc Müller, Institute of Toxicology and Genetics, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Herrmann von Helmholtz Platz 1, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen 76021, Germany. Tel.: + 49 7247 823444; Fax: + 49 7247 823354; E-mail: ferenc.mueller@itg.fzk.de
aThese authors contributed equally to this work
Received 19 February 2007; Accepted 16 July 2007
Abstract
Early steps of embryo development are directed by maternal gene products and trace levels of zygotic gene activity in vertebrates. A major activation of zygotic transcription occurs together with degradation of maternal mRNAs during the midblastula transition in several vertebrate systems. How these processes are regulated in preparation for the onset of differentiation in the vertebrate embryo is mostly unknown. Here, we studied the function of TATA-binding protein (TBP) by knock down and DNA microarray analysis of gene expression in early embryo development. We show that a subset of polymerase II-transcribed genes with ontogenic stage-dependent regulation requires TBP for their zygotic activation. TBP is also required for limiting the activation of genes during development. We reveal that TBP plays an important role in the degradation of a specific subset of maternal mRNAs during late blastulation/early gastrulation, which involves targets of the miR-430 pathway. Hence, TBP acts as a specific regulator of the key processes underlying the transition from maternal to zygotic regulation of embryogenesis. These results implicate core promoter recognition as an additional level of differential gene regulation during development.
Keywords:
- maternal mRNA,
- MBT,
- TBP,
- transcription,
- zebrafish
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