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Series GSE11231 Query DataSets for GSE11231
Status Public on Nov 17, 2008
Title The zinc finger protein Zelda plays a key role in the maternal to zygotic transition in Drosophila
Organism Drosophila melanogaster
Experiment type Expression profiling by array
Summary In all animals, the initial events of embryogenesis are controlled by maternal gene products that are deposited into the developing oocyte. At some point after fertilization, control of embryogenesis is transferred to the zygotic genome in a process called the maternal to zygotic transition (MZT). During this time maternal RNAs are degraded and zygotic RNAs are transcribed1. A long standing question has been, what factors regulate these events? The recent findings that microRNAs and Smaugs mediate maternal transcript degradation brought new life to this old problem2,3, however, the transcription factors that activate zygotic gene expression remained elusive. A clue came from the finding that many early zygotic genes in Drosophila share a cis-regulatory heptamer motif, CAGGTAG and related sequences, collectively referred to as TAG-team sites4,5. We asked whether there was a dedicated transcription factor that interacts with these sites to activate early genes. Here we report the discovery of a zinc-finger protein, Zelda (Zld) that binds specifically to TAG-team sites, and is capable of activating transcription in transient transfection assays. Mutant embryos lacking zld are defective in the cellularization process, and fail to activate the transcription of many early zygotic genes involved in cellularization, sex determination, and dorsoventral patterning. Global expression profiling confirmed that Zld plays a key role in the activation of the early zygotic genome, and suggests that Zld may also play a role in maternal RNA degradation during the MZT since many RNAs are up-regulated in the absence of Zld.
Keywords: Drosophila early embryo, MZT, transcriptional activator
 
Overall design Total RNA samples were extracted from three replicate collections of 1-2 hr yw and M- zld embryos by TRIzol (invitrogen). A portion of the collected embryos was fixed and stained with DAPI; 90% were in nuclear cycles 8 to13. cDNA was prepared using the GeneChip® HT One-Cycle cDNA Synthesis Kit (Manufactured by Invitrogen for Affymetrix) and labeled with the BioArray™ HighYield™ RNA Transcript Labeling Kit (Enzo). Labeled probes were hybridized to Drosophila Genome 2 Affymetrix arrays and processed by a GeneChip Fluidics Station 400. Data were acquired and normalized by the GeneChip® Scanner 3000 and processed by the Affymetrix GeneChip Operating Software (GCOS). t-test analysis was performed on the data from three biological replicates.
 
Contributor(s) Nien C, Liang H, Liu H, Metzstein M, Kirov N, Rushlow C
Citation(s) 18931655
Submission date Apr 21, 2008
Last update date Aug 28, 2018
Contact name Christine Rushlow
Organization name NYU
Department Biology
Street address 100 Washington Sq.E.
City New York
State/province NY
ZIP/Postal code 10003
Country USA
 
Platforms (1)
GPL1322 [Drosophila_2] Affymetrix Drosophila Genome 2.0 Array
Samples (6)
GSM283119 zld-GCL 1-2 hr 1
GSM283120 zld-GCL 1-2 hr 2
GSM283121 zld-GCL 1-2 hr 3
Relations
BioProject PRJNA106727

Download family Format
SOFT formatted family file(s) SOFTHelp
MINiML formatted family file(s) MINiMLHelp
Series Matrix File(s) TXTHelp

Supplementary file Size Download File type/resource
GSE11231_RAW.tar 14.4 Mb (http)(custom) TAR (of CEL)
Processed data included within Sample table

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