Holistic analysis of signal transduction

February 1, 2013
2:30 p.m.

Processes regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, survival and death are the basis for animal development, tissue homeostasis and tumor growth, and a central role is played by a number of
embryonic and postnatal signaling pathways often disrupted in cancer and diseases. Thus, research at the tissue and cellular level is oriented toward dissection of these pathways and to understanding their
cross-talks. Usually, transduction cascades culminates in activation of transcription factors that bind ciselements and activates target genes.
The activation of synthetic constructs bearing multimerized copies of the cis-element bound to a minimal promoter of a reporter gene is a way to collect the genetic outcome of each signaling cascade, by transfection of a specific cell line and components of the signal transduction cascade.
As this approach might lack an in vivo relevance due to limits of using cell lines to infer tissue genetics a number of transgenic animal reporter lines have been developed, from mice to drosophila and, lately, zebrafish.
I will focus on the advantage of using zebrafish in this approach trying to convince you that embryo and larval transparency, genetic and chemical manipulation, screening properties and transgenic manipulability, makes zebrafish an excellent tool for analysis of signal transduction pathways and their interactions.