The ontogeny of dactylin expression in the embryonic mouse

Abstract

The current study is designed to characterize the ontogeny of dactylin expression in the developing mouse embryo. Dactylin is an important gene for proper digit formation. It is a member of the F‐box/WD40 gene family and is involved in the ubiquitin ligase process that targets specific proteins for degradation. Mouse dactylaplasia has similar phenotypic characteristics to humans with split hand/ spilt foot malformation, furthermore dactylin, which has been mapped to chromosome 19 in mice, is syntenic to the SHFM3 region in humans on chromsome 10q24. Understanding the ontogeny of dactylin is important because it allows us to look at specific time periods critical for the development of digits. Mouse embryos were collected prior to digit formation (E8 and E10), during digit formation (E12), and after digit formation is complete (E14) to determine at what point dactylin expression was turned on and off. Once the embryos were collected the limb buds or entire limbs were removed, total mRNA isolated, and RT‐PCR was used to determine gene expression. We found dactylin expression to be present at all time periods examined. In order to get a more complete ontogeny, we are currently expanding the original time frame to E2 through E21. This work was supported by a Lander University Foundation Grant.