摘要
Actin is a ubiquitous protein and plays essential roles on cellular structure maintenance and cellular motility in both muscle and non-muscle tissues.Multiple genes encoding muscle actin have been identified from the ascidians,including those expressed in the larval tail muscle,the adult body-wall muscle,and adult heart muscle.In this study,a novel striated non-tail muscle actin gene was identified from the RNA-seq data of Ciona savignyi embryos.Phylogenetic analysis,alignment of the N-terminal amino acid sequences and comparation of diagnostic residues provided evidence that it had high similarity with vertebrate cardiac and skeletal muscle actin.In situ hybridization and promoter-driven GFP reporter assay revealed that it was specifically expressed in the primordia of the oral and atrial siphon.We hereby defined it as siphon-specific muscle actin coding gene(Cs-SMA).A 201 bp(−1350 bp to−1150 bp)sequence containing T-box and Six1/2 binding motif within the upstream region of Cs-SMA confined the expression of GFP in the siphons of electroporated embryos.Six1/2 binding motif was experimentally confirmed to play indispensable role in controlling the siphon-specific expression of Cs-SMA.The tissue-specific expression of Cs-SMA in the siphon primordia indicated its potential crucial roles in Ciona embryogenesis and organogenesis.
基金
funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Nos.2019YFE0190900,2018YFD0900705).
