EST analysis of gene expression in early cleavage-stage sea urchin embryos
Abstract
A set of 956 expressed sequence tags derived from 7-hour (mid-cleavage) sea urchin embryos was analyzed to assess biosynthetic functions and to illuminate the structure of the message population at this stage. About a quarter of the expressed sequence tags represented repetitive sequence transcripts typical of early embryos, or ribosomal and mitochondrial RNAs, while a majority of the remainder contained significant open reading frames. A total of 232 sequences, including 153 different proteins, produced significant matches when compared against GenBank. The majority of these identified sequences represented 'housekeeping' proteins, i.e., cytoskeletal proteins, metabolic enzymes, transporters and proteins involved in cell division. The most interesting finds were components of signaling systems and transcription factors not previously reported in early sea urchin embryos, including components of Notch and TGF signal transduction pathways. As expected from earlier kinetic analyses of the embryo mRNA populations, no very prevalent protein-coding species were encountered; the most highly represented such sequences were cDNAs encoding cyclins A and B. The frequency of occurrence of all sequences within the database was used to construct a sequence prevalence distribution. The result, confirming earlier mRNA population analyses, indicated that the poly(A) RNA of the early embryo consists mainly of a very complex set of low-copy-number transcripts.
Additional Information
© 1999 The Company of Biologists Limited. Accepted 6 June; published on WWW 5 August 1999. We thank Dr Hans Lehrach, Director, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, for his help with the construction of the arrayed library used in this study. This work was supported by the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.Attached Files
Published - LEEdev99.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 28352
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20111207-130103463
- Stowers Institute for Medical Research
- Created
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2011-12-22Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field