Investigation roles of the miRNA pathway in maternal-to-xygotic transition

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K14530
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Developmental biology
• Research Institution: Kumamoto University
• Principal Investigator: Nakamura Akira 熊本大学, 発生医学研究所, 教授 (90323245)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ショウジョウバエ / CRISPR-Cas9 / miRNA / ゲノム編集

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The maternal-to-Zygotic transition (MZT) involves degradation of maternal product to switch zygotic gene-oriented development, and is the conserved process in animal development. To investigate roles of the miRNA pathway genes in MZT in the Drosophila embryo, we generated several GFP knocked-in flies for Dcr-1, Ago1 and Gw. We knocked down these GFP fusion protein specilicaally in early embryogenesis by activating deGradFP system, which poly-ubiquitinates GFP-fusion proteins to promote their degradation. We found that when GFP-tagged Gw was knocked down, about 50% of embryos stalled embryogenesis at the stage during which the MZT starts, suggesting that the miRNA pathway is indeed involved in the MZT.

Free Research Field

発生生物学