The quantification of biological interactions is very important in life sciences. Here we report for the first time, to our knowledge, the determination of a biomolecular dissociation constant (K(D)) in living zebrafish embryos at physiological protein expression levels. For that purpose, we extend the application of single wavelength fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy into small organisms and measure the interaction of Cdc42, a small Rho-GTPase, and IQGAP1, an actin-binding scaffolding protein. Cdc42 and IQGAP1 were labeled with monomeric red fluorescent protein and enhanced green fluorescent protein, respectively. Both fluorophores were excited at a single wavelength of 514 nm, simplifying the fluorescence spectroscopy measurements and allowing quantification. For the determination of the interaction, we used two Cdc42 mutants, the constitutively active Cdc42(G12V) which is in a predominantly GTP-bound form and the dominant-negative GDP-bound Cdc42(T17N). While Cdc42(G12V) binds to IQGAP1 with an apparent K(D) of approximately 100 nM, Cdc42(T17N) has at least a one-order-of-magnitude lower affinity for the same protein. As a comparison, we measure the same protein-protein interactions in Chinese hamster ovary cell cultures but observe significant differences in protein mobility and K(D) from the zebrafish measurements, supporting the notion that bimolecular interactions depend on the biological system under investigation and are best performed under physiologically relevant conditions.

Background: During development cell migration takes place prior to differentiation of many cell types. The chemokine receptor Cxcr4 and its ligand Sdf1 are implicated in migration of several cell lineages, including appendicular muscles.

Drosophila sine oculis homologous genes in vertebrates are homeobox-containing transcription factors functioning within the Pax-Six-Eya-Dach regulatory network during development. In this study, we describe the cloning and expression of a zebrafish homolog of sine oculis, six1. The reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction demonstrated accumulation of six1 transcripts at mid-gastrula, and in situ hybridization showed their subsequent expression in the cranial placode and later in the olfactory, otic, and lateral line placodes, inner ear, and neuromasts. In addition, six1 is expressed in the pituitary, branchial arches, somites, pectoral fin, ventral abdomen muscle, and the cranial muscles of the eye and lower jaw. An increase of six1 expression was observed in the lateral line, muscles, and inner ear of the mind bomb mutant, illustrating a regulatory effect of the Notch pathway on expression of Six genes.

Udu has been shown to play an essential role during blood cell development; however, its roles in other cellular processes remain largely unexplored. In addition, ugly duckling (udu) mutants exhibited somite and myotome boundary defects. Our fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis also showed that the loss of udu function resulted in defective cell cycle progression and comet assay indicated the presence of increased DNA damage in udu tu24 mutants. We further showed that the extensive p53-dependent apoptosis in udu tu24 mutants is a consequence of activation in the Atm-Chk2 pathway. Udu seems not to be required for DNA repair, because both wild-type and udu embryos similarly respond to and recover from UV treatment. Yeast two-hybrid and coimmunoprecipitation data demonstrated that PAH-L repeats and SANT-L domain of Udu interacts with MCM3 and MCM4. Furthermore, Udu is colocalized with 5-bromo-2 -deoxyuridine and heterochromatin during DNA replication, suggesting a role in maintaining genome integrity. INTRODUCTIONugly duckling (udu tu24 ) mutant was first isolated from the 1996 Tü bingen screen and has been shown to exhibit a short body-axis with massive cell death (Hammerschmidt et al., 1996). Another udu allele, udu sq1 , was isolated in a genetic screen aiming at mutants with defects in hematopoiesis (Liu et al., 2007). Positional cloning revealed that Udu protein encodes a novel nuclear factor consisting of three conserved regions (CR-1, CR-2, and CR-3) that do not share similarity with any known domains, two paired amphipathic ␣-helix like (PAH-L) repeats, and one putative SW13, ADA2, N-Cor and TFIIIB like (SANT-L) domain. The C-terminal PAH-L and SANT-L domains have been shown to be essential in primitive erythroid cell development (Liu et al., 2007). The PAH domain, first identified in yeast SIN3 (Wang et al., 1990), has been demonstrated to mediate protein-protein interactions (Spronk et al., 2000). SIN3 has no intrinsic DNA binding ability and has to be targeted to gene promoters by interacting with DNA binding proteins, thereafter positively and negatively regulating genes involved in diverse cellular functions (Silverstein and Ekwall, 2005). The SANT domain is a highly conserved motif with similarity to Myb DNA binding domain (Aasland et al., 1996), which has been shown to be critical in regulating chromatin accessibility (Boyer et al., 2002(Boyer et al., , 2004.The DNA damage response pathway is a cellular surveillance system that senses the presence of damaged DNA and elicits checkpoint activation and subsequent lesion repair in preventing amplification or loss of genes or chromosomes (Zhou and Elledge, 2000). The critical components of DNA damage checkpoint are two phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinaselike kinase family proteins: Ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) and ATM-and Rad3-related (ATR) (Abraham, 2003;Shiloh, 2003). ATR functions as a sensor and transducer in response to UV light and presumably to genotoxic agents that give rise to stalled replication forks, and subsequently activates Checkp...