Meeting Abstract

P1.99  Saturday, Jan. 4 15:30  Inducible gene expression in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis IKMI, A.*; HACKER, J.; GIBSON, M.C.; Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City; Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City aik@stowers.org

The cnidarian Nemtostella vectensis is an emerging model organism critical for comparative and evolutionary developmental biology. Within the last few years, genetic tools such as mRNA injection and morpholino-mediated gene knockdown have been employed to investigate the functions of genes during early embryonic development. However, no tools exist for inducible gene expression, which would be highly useful to study the function of genes at post-embryonic stages. Here we report the identification and cloning of heat shock promoters (hsp) from Nematostella and show that an increase in ambient temperature can activate these promoters to trigger expression of the reporter green fluorescent protein gene. Out of five candidates for hsp promoters, two activate GFP expression after heat shock with induction intensities ranging from weak to strong. Using meganuclease I-SceI mediated transgenesis, we also show that these hsp promoters can be induced at different developmental stages. Thus, this method allows for temporally regulated gene expression in Nematostella and will provide new opportunities for studying gene function at later developmental stages.