Scientists discover key gene in artery...( Lawson and colleagues screened this pop...)

The researchers thus identified "y10": a mutant fish that appeared to lack arteries, but had ostensibly normal veins. Dr. Lawson and colleagues determined that the gene responsible for the y10 mutant phenotype was plcg1. The plcg1 protein (Plcg1) is an intracellular signaling molecule found in a number of vertebrate species, including mammals. While previous work implicated Plcg1 in endothelial cell signaling in vitro, a specific requirement for Plcg1 in arterial development in vivo was, heretofore, unknown.

In addition to providing novel insight into the specification of arterial cell fate during development, these finding illustrate the utility of this transgenic zebrafish system, which the authors expect to be a valuable tool in the further exploration of this developmental pathway.

"I think an important implication of this work is that the signals that drive this process appear to be the same in fish and mammals. For that reason we think it is likely that what we learn about zebrafish blood vessels may help us manipulate the growth of human blood vessels in a variety of disease processes, including diabetes and cancer. The increasing availability of useful genetic tools in zebrafish, such as our blood vessel transgenic line and the soon-to-be-completed genome sequence, will only increase the utility of this model organism to define the signals that drive normal blood vessel development," states Dr. Lawson, who is continuing this work in his own lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he is an assistant professor of molecular medicine.

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Contact: Heather Cosel
coselpie@cshl.org
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
31-May-2003