Cloning and embryonic expression patterns of the zebrafish Runt domain genes, runxa and runxb

We isolated zebrafish homologues of the Runt-related transcription factor gene family (Runx family), runxa and runxb, and analyzed their developmental expression patterns. The deduced amino acid sequence of Runxa was highly homologous to that of AML1 (also called CBFA2, PEBP2alphaB or Runx1), a critical regulator of mammalian hematopoiesis expressed in cells of the hematopoietic lineage as well as other tissues. During zebrafish development, the runxa gene was not expressed in hematopoietic tissues but in the olfactory placodes and cells attached to the otic vesicles. We identified three kinds of runxb transcripts, which encoded two types of proteins with different N-terminal regions. The Runxb proteins were highly similar to AML2 (CBFA3, PEBP2alphaC or Runx3). The expression sites of the shared region of runxb mRNAs during development were the trigeminal ganglions, dorsal neurons of the neural tube and the lateral line primordia. These findings show that expression patterns of the zebrafish Runx genes are distinct from that of the mammalian genes.