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Fig. 4. A morpholino, MO[dlD-V], targeted to the intron-exon boundary responsible
for the addition of the DeltaD terminal valine residue disrupts splicing and
selectively removes the PDZ domain binding site for up to 72 hours of
development. (A) The genomic structure of the zebrafish DeltaD gene
surrounding the PDZ domain binding site, indicating the amino acids at the
boundaries of each exon, the MO[dlDV] morpholino annealing site, and primer
binding sites used to monitor the effects on splicing by RT-PCR in (B). (B)
Effects on deltaD mRNA splicing, monitored by RTPCR, in embryos
injected with MO[dlD-V] at the one-cell stage and left to develop until the
shield stage (6 hpf). Total RNA was extracted from 20 embryos for each dose,
reverse transcribed and amplified by PCR. PCR products were cloned and fully
sequenced. Uninjected embryos produced a 370 bp band that corresponds to the
correctly spliced transcript, coding for a protein that ends ATEV. The
amount of correctly spliced product decreases as the amount of injected
morpholino increases; at a dose of 5 ng or more per embryo, no correctly
spliced product is observable. Products at 469 and 269 bp were mis-spliced as
shown and correspond to proteins lacking the terminal ATEV. The band at
330 bp was not characterized but probably represents the use of a cryptic
splice donor site. The 546 bp band may result from small amounts of
contaminating genomic DNA in the extracted RNA. The separate small panel below
shows RT-PCR analysis of the same cDNA using oligonucleotides targeted to an
upstream region of the deltaD transcript (nucleotides 389-923) that
is unaffected by MO[dlD-V]. The total quantity of deltaD mRNA is not
significantly altered by the MO injections. (C) Time course of the effect.
Embryos were injected and allowed to develop until the indicated stages, and
RT-PCR was performed as in B.
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