Abstract
Nematostella vectensis has emerged as one as the most established models of the phylum Cnidaria (sea anemones, corals, hydroids and jellyfish) for studying animal evolution. The availability of a reference genome and the relative ease of culturing and genetically manipulating this organism make it an attractive model for addressing questions regarding the evolution of venom, development, regeneration and other interesting understudied questions. We and others have previously reported the use of tissue-specific promoters for investigating the function of a tissue or a cell type of interest in vivo. However, to our knowledge, genetic regulators at the whole organism level have not been reported yet. Here we report the identification and utilization of a ubiquitous promoter to drive a wide and robust expression of the fluorescent protein mCherry. We generated animals containing a TATA binding protein (TBP) promoter upstream of the mCherry gene. Flow cytometry and fluorescent microscopy revealed expression of mCherry in diverse cell types, accounting for more than 90% of adult animal cells. Furthermore, we detected a stable mCherry expression at different life stages and throughout generations. This tool will expand the existing experimental toolbox to facilitate genetic engineering and functional studies at the whole organism level.
Highlights
Over the past two decades the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has gained popularity as a model organism for studying molecular evolution [1]
H3K4me2 (Figure 1A), which are associated with active transcription at the gastrula, planula and adult stages of N. vectensis [28], we hypothesized that this promoter will drive the ubiquitous expression of genes at different life cycle stages
The emergence of N. vectensis as a model organism asks for the development of similar technologies for genetic engineering
Summary
Over the past two decades the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has gained popularity as a model organism for studying molecular evolution [1]. N. vectensis is important for comparative biology since it is a representative model species of Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, hydroids and jellyfish. Sequencing of the Nematostella genome revealed high complexity of gene content, exon–intron structure, and large-scale gene linkage, which is more similar to vertebrates than to model invertebrate animals like flies or nematodes [7]. This discovery, together with improvements in genome editing technologies, have paved the way for functional studies aiming to provide insights into the origin of complex traits
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