The zebrafish organizer requires chordino (original) (raw)
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- Published: 26 June 1997
Nature volume 387, pages 862–863 (1997)Cite this article
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The dorsoventral pattern of vertebrate embryos is established and regulated by opposing gradients of ventralizing bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and BMP antagonists1,2,3 (such as Chordin2,4, Noggin5,6 and Follistatin7,8 in the frog embryo) secreted by a dorsal organizer. In the zebrafish, Danio rerio, mutations in a number of genes that affect dorsoventral patterning of the early embryo have been identified9,10, but only two, dino and mercedes, are involved in dorsal specification11, with dino mutants displaying the stronger, ventralized phenotype. Here we show that the dino phenotype is caused by a mutation in the zebrafish chordin gene, revealing that Chordin is an essential component of the dorsal organizer. Furthermore, we provide evidence that Chordin and BMPs are antagonistic, not only at the protein level but also at the transcriptional level.
In a restriction-fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) linkage analysis of more than 400 mutant chromosomes, we saw no recombination between dino and chordin (Fig. 1b), indicating that dino and chordin are within 0.25 centimorgans (cM). The chordin complementary DNA from _din_tt250 mutant embryos has a deletion of 104 base pairs, causing a frame-shift predicted to produce a severely truncated protein (Fig. 1c). This truncated form has only the first 42 amino acids of the wild-type Chordin protein and completely lacks the cysteine-rich repeats.
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Authors and Affiliations
- MPI für Entwicklungsbiologie, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076, Germany, Tübingen
Stefan Schulte-Merker - Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University, New York, 10032, New York, USA
Kevin J. Lee - Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA
Andrew P. McMahon - MPI für Immunbiologie, Stübeweg 51, 79108, Freiburg, Germany
Matthias Hammerschmidt - *To whom correspondence should be addressed,
Matthias Hammerschmidt
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- Stefan Schulte-Merker
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Schulte-Merker, S., Lee, K., McMahon, A. et al. The zebrafish organizer requires chordino.Nature 387, 862–863 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/43092
- Issue Date: 26 June 1997
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/43092