PUBLICATION
The B-cell maturation factor Blimp-1 specifies vertebrate slow-twitch muscle fiber identity in response to Hedgehog signaling
- Authors
- Baxendale, S., Davison, C., Muxworthy, C., Wolff, C., Ingham, P.W., and Roy, S.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-040218-1
- Date
- 2004
- Source
- Nature Genetics 36(1): 88-93 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Baxendale, Sarah, Davison, Claire, Ingham, Philip, Roy, Sudipto, Wolff, Christian
- Keywords
- none
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Cell Differentiation
- DNA-Binding Proteins/physiology*
- Hedgehog Proteins/physiology*
- Molecular Sequence Data
- Muscle Fibers, Slow-Twitch/physiology*
- Nuclear Proteins
- Repressor Proteins/physiology*
- Signal Transduction
- Transcription Factors/physiology*
- Zebrafish/embryology*
- Zebrafish Proteins/physiology*
- PubMed
- 14702044 Full text @ Nat. Genet.
Citation
Baxendale, S., Davison, C., Muxworthy, C., Wolff, C., Ingham, P.W., and Roy, S. (2004) The B-cell maturation factor Blimp-1 specifies vertebrate slow-twitch muscle fiber identity in response to Hedgehog signaling. Nature Genetics. 36(1):88-93.
Abstract
Vertebrate skeletal muscles comprise distinct fiber types that differ in their morphology, contractile function, mitochondrial content and metabolic properties. Recent studies identified the transcriptional coactivator PGC-1alpha as a key mediator of the physiological stimuli that modulate fiber-type plasticity in postembryonic development. Although myoblasts become fated to differentiate into distinct kinds of fibers early in development, the identities of regulatory proteins that determine embryonic fiber-type specification are still obscure. Here we show that the gene u-boot (ubo), a mutation in which disrupts the induction of embryonic slow-twitch fibers, encodes the zebrafish homolog of Blimp-1, a SET domain-containing transcription factor that promotes the terminal differentiation of B lymphocytes in mammals. Expression of ubo is induced by Hedgehog (Hh) signaling in prospective slow muscle precursors, and its activity alone is sufficient to direct slow-twitch fiber-specific development by naive myoblasts. Our data provide the first molecular insight into the mechanism by which a specific group of muscle precursors is driven along a distinct pathway of fiber-type differentiation in response to positional cues in the vertebrate embryo.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping