Lecture 2 and 3 Principles and techniques Flashcards
Ectoderm forms
skin cells
neuron
pigment cell
Mesoderm forms
cardiac skeletal muscle tubule cell of kidney RBC smooth muscle in gut
Endoderm forms
Lung cell
thyroid cell
pancreatic cell
Germ cell forms
Sperm
egg
How do we study change in cell behaviour or cell-cell communication
Embryology
Developmental biology
Animal models and use of genetics
Embryology
• Embryology: observational biology (microscopes) and experimental manipulation (transplants)
Developmental biology
study of genes and proteins
When a researcher discovers a new gene encoding a TF the questions they need to ask are:
- Where and when is the gene expressed in the embryo
- Is the protein expressed with the same timing than the gene
- How is the gene regulated
- What are the tissues/organs derived from the cells that express this gene
How study where and when gene is expressed in the embryo
Which is not spatial
- in situ hybridization
- northern blot
- RT-PCR (reverse transcriptase PCR)
- micro-array (RNA sequencing) - NOT SPATIAL - unless pick specific place in embryo
- reporter lines (transgenic)
Which 2 techniques cannot study location of gene
northern blotting/RT-PCR if the WHOLE cell is used
Developmental biology is the study of
gene expression i.e. establishes where and when a gene is expressed
Describe process of in situ hybridisation
- Embryo must be fixed (killed)
- Reveals location of target mRNA which you know the identity of
- Probe labelled with DIG which is complementary to the mRNA
- This binds to Anti-DIG (which is an antibody)
- 2 reporter genes used: GFP, beta-galactosidase
- Alkaline phosphatase (coupled to the antibody) gives blue precipitate
- This is seen when anti-DIG hybridises to DIG labelled probe which has hybridised to mRNA i.e. at hybrid DNA:RNA (so when DNA, RNA and AB was present in the embryo)
- Can be temporal as if take embryos at different stages you get diff info. Yet can’t get this from same embryo as it killed in staining. Must be on diff embryos of different stages
Describe process of transgenic lines:
- requires knowledge of
- expression of a gene is determined by
- generate a transgene where…
- reporter gene…
- introduce this into…
- GFP is natural fluorescent so preferred as…
- this is different to fusion of GFP where…
- Requires knowledge of how gene of interest is controlled i.e. what are the promotors and enhancers = regulatory sequences
- Expression of a gene is determined by the regulatory regions
- Generate a transgene where replace gene with a reporter gene e.g. coding sequence for GFP/bGal downstream of regulatory sequences
- Reporter gene i.e. GFP will be expressed wherever the gene is usually expressed when introduced into an animal model
- Introduce this into the animal e.g. mouse, fish, fly
- GFP is naturally fluorescent so preferred – don’t have to fix or kill the embryo so from the same embryo you can generate continuous expression pattern so temporal AND spatial
- This is different to fusion with GFP which is fused in the frame to allow visualisation of the protein, compared to localisation of mRNA here
High throughput analyses (microarray, RNAseq) describe
- Simultaneously express 1000s of genes in the embryo in one single experiment
- Looking at the entire genome expressed and not a single gene
Microarray is a ‘…’ approach
genome wide
What is needed in microarrays
Large amount of mRNA so young/small embryos would be unsuitable