Establishing a positional information assay for brain ventricle mutants and investigating the choroid plexuses in zebrafish

The process by which the neural tube expands into three brain ventricles can be understood through genetic mutant analysis. Within the framework of a characterization of zebrafish mutants with brain ventricle phenotypes, I have developed an assay that looks for evidence of compromised gene expression patterns. I have shown that a cocktail of krox20, pax2a, shh, and zicl antisense RNA probes hybridizes to domains in the developing brain that reflect anterior, posterior, dorsal, and ventral axis specification. In addition, I have investigated the choroid plexus (CP) cells lining the brain ventricles in the zebrafish. Though we were unable to clearly identify the CP in the adult brain, we did identify two homologues in zebrafish of a conserved gene expressed in CP of vertebrates. We found that one of these genes, Drcpllb, was expressed from tailbud into early larva stage. Further, Drcpllb is expressed in neurula stage embryos in the anterior neural plate. Through these studies, we established an assay to analyze positional identity of cells in the neural tube and discovered a potential choroid plexus marker, shown its expression time course, and outlined its early expression pattern in the zebrafish.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Biology.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Wolf, Catherine D., 1980-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hazel L. Sive.

• Biology.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28681

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/28681