Zebrafish lines expressing UAS-driven red probes for monitoring cytoskeletal dynamics

Actin filaments and microtubules are principal components of the cytoskeleton that regulate the basic cellular phenomena underlying many fundamental cellular processes. Therefore, analyzing their dynamics in living cells is important for understanding cellular events more precisely. In this article, we report two novel transgenic zebrafish lines expressing red fluorescent proteins tagged with Lifeact or EB1 that interact with actin filaments and microtubule plus ends, respectively, under the control of the GAL4-UAS system. Using these transgenic lines, we could detect F-actin and microtubule plus end dynamics in specific tissues of living zebrafish embryos by crossing with GAL4 driver lines. In addition, we could achieve multi-color imaging using these transgenic lines with GFP-expressing transgenic lines. Therefore, our transgenic lines that carry UAS-driven red fluorescent cytoskeletal probes are useful tools for analyzing spatiotemporal changes of the cytoskeletal elements using multicolor live imaging.