Ubiquitous transgene expression and Cre-based recombination driven by the ubiquitin promoter in zebrafish

Christian Mosimann, Charles K. Kaufman, Pulin Li, Emily K. Pugach, Owen J. Tamplin, Leonard I. Zon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

312 Scopus citations

Abstract

Molecular genetics approaches in zebrafish research are hampered by the lack of a ubiquitous transgene driver element that is active at all developmental stages. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of the zebrafish ubiquitin (ubi) promoter, which drives constitutive transgene expression during all developmental stages and analyzed adult organs. Notably, ubi expresses in all blood cell lineages, and we demonstrate the application of ubi-driven fluorophore transgenics in hematopoietic transplantation experiments to assess true multilineage potential of engrafted cells. We further generated transgenic zebrafish that express ubiquitous 4-hydroxytamoxifen-controlled Cre recombinase activity from a ubi:creERt2 transgene, as well as ubi:loxPEGFP- loxP-mCherry (ubi:Switch) transgenics and show their use as a constitutive fluorescent lineage tracing reagent. The ubi promoter and the transgenic lines presented here thus provide a broad resource and important advancement for transgenic applications in zebrafish.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)169-177
Number of pages9
JournalDevelopment
Volume138
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2011

Keywords

  • CreER
  • LoxP
  • Transgenesis
  • Ubiquitin promoter
  • Zebrafish

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