Finally, a transgenic GFP Hydra
Hydra freshwater polyps are important model organisms in environmental and conservation
science and evolutionary developmental biology. Scientists study the organisms
because they evolved ∋600 million years ago, they can fully generate lost
body structures, and their development is relatively simple and based on three stem
cell lineages that give rise to ectodermal and endodermal epithelial cells, nerve
cells, gland cells and nematocytes.
These images show the individual motility of GFP-expressing endodermal epithelial cells in an
asexually proliferating polyp (left) and the same organism one day later (right).
Images reprinted with permission of PNAS.
To better study cell movement in this organism,
scientists need a transgenic
Hydra line, but attempts at achieving a stable
one have been unsuccessful. Now researchers from Christian Albrechts University
in Kiel and from Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen,
both in Germany, have developed a stable transgenic line of
Hydra vulgaris
that expresses enhanced GFP. The method they employed may be extendable to other
taxa such as
Nematostella (sea anemone) and
Acropora (coral).
The transgenic Hydra on the left shows GFP expression in some of
its endodermal epithelial cells, and the one on the right shows GFP expression
in all of its endodermal epithelial cells.
As published in the April 18 issue
of
PNAS, the researchers used the transgenic
Hydra to study cell movement
during budding and during regeneration. They think that the new transgenic line
will reveal much about the model organism, and because the cnidaria phylum to which
Hydra belongs is at the base of the metazoan phylogenetic tree, some information
revealed about this transgenic organism may hold true to all metazoans.
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