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Updated: Jul 29, 2025
Real Time and Repeated Measurement of Skeletal Muscle Growth in Individual Live Zebrafish Subjected to Altered Electrical Activity
Published on: June 16, 2022
Betaglycan promoter activity is differentially regulated during myogenesis in zebrafish embryo somites
Lizbeth Ramírez-Vidal1, Tonatiuh Molina-Villa1, Valentín Mendoza1
1Departmento de Biología Celular y del Desarrollo, Instituto de Fisiología Celular, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.
Background:
Betaglycan, also known as the TGFβ type III receptor (Tgfbr3), is a co-receptor that modulates TGFβ family signaling. Tgfbr3 is upregulated during C2C12 myoblast differentiation and expressed in mouse embryos myocytes.
Results:
To investigate tgfbr3 transcriptional regulation during zebrafish embryonic myogenesis, we cloned a 3.2 kb promoter fragment that drives reporter transcription during C2C12 myoblasts differentiation and in the Tg(tgfbr3:mCherry) transgenic zebrafish. We detect tgfbr3 protein and mCherry expression in the adaxial cells concomitantly with the onset of their radial migration to become slow-twitch muscle fibers in the Tg(tgfbr3:mCherry). Remarkably, this expression displays a measurable antero-posterior somitic gradient expression.
Conclusions:
tgfbr3 is transcriptionally regulated during somitic muscle development in zebrafish with an antero-posterior gradient expression that preferentially marks the adaxial cells and their descendants.
