Systematic identification of factors in zebrafish regulating the early midbrain and cerebellar development by odered...

During brain development, various transcription factors are activated in the regional specific manner and define the identities characteristic to individual regions, and many of such factors have been identified in the vertebrate brain, by taking advantage of the structural and functional conservation of them with the invertebrate counterparts. However, it is still largely unknown why individual transcription factors can define the final morphology and function of the tissues expressing these factors because of the lack of knowledge on which genes are actually up- or down-regulated as downstream targets of individual transcription factors. In this review, we introduce novel technologies which we have invented or improved as a part of our endeavor to identify and functionally analyze the downstream target genes of Isle-3 which are involved in development of the midbrain and the midbrain/hindbrain boundary region in zebrafish embryos. Our strategy and technologies can be applied to analyzing the downstream genes of any other transcription factors.