Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 23, 2025
The Zebrafish Tol2 System: A Modular and Flexible Gateway-Based Transgenesis Approach
Published on: November 30, 2022
Functional differentiation of bmp2a and bmp2b genes in zebrafish
Yaming Wu1, Aili Sun1, Chunhong Nie1
1College of Fisheries, Key Lab of Freshwater Animal Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs/Key Lab of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Ministry of Education/Engineering Research Center of Green Development for Conventional Aquatic Biological Industry in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Ministry of Education, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China.
Abstract:
Bone morphogenetic protein 2 plays an important role in the regulation of osteoblast proliferation and differentiation. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the bmp2 ortholog evolved from the same ancestral gene family in vertebrates and was duplicated in teleost, which were named bmp2a and bmp2b. The results of whole-mount in situ hybridization showed that the expression locations of bmp2a and bmp2b in zebrafish were different in different periods (24 hpf, 48 hpf, 72 hpf), which revealed potential functional differentiation between bmp2a and bmp2b. Phenotypic analysis showed that bmp2a mutations caused partial rib and vertebral deformities in zebrafish, while bmp2b-/- embryos died massively after 12 hpf due to abnormal somite formation. We further explored the expression pattern changes of genes (bmp2a, bmp2b, smad1, fgf4, runx2b, alp) related to skeletal development at different developmental stages (20 dpf, 60 dpf, 90 dpf) in wild-type and bmp2a-/- zebrafish. The results showed that the expression of runx2b in bmp2a-/- was significantly downregulated at three stages and the expression of other genes were significantly downregulated at 90 dpf compared with wild-type zebrafish. The study revealed functional differentiation of bmp2a and bmp2b in zebrafish embryonic and skeletal development.
