Characterization of the Enigma family in zebrafish

The three Enigma subfamily proteins, Enigma, Enigma homologue, and Cypher/ZASP belong to the PDZ and LIM encoding protein family, which is characterized by the presence of a PDZ- and one or more LIM domains. PDZ/LIM proteins play important biological roles, and all members have been shown to associate with the actin cytoskeleton. We describe here the splice form specific expression patterns for the three Enigma subfamily members during zebrafish embryogenesis. Whole-mount in situ hybridization revealed common and distinct expression patterns for the different PDZ or LIM domain encoding splice variants. We further studied the role of enigma in zebrafish development. Enigma knockdown appeared to be embryonic lethal shortly after the end of gastrulation and in few surviving embryos led to elongation defects and disorganized somites. In summary, we show here the temporal and spatial expression patterns of the three Enigma family members and their PDZ and LIM domain encoding splice forms during zebrafish embryogenesis. Our results suggest that enigma is important for the formation and organization of somites and might play an important role for actin cytoskeleton organization during development.