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- Title
The B-cell maturation factor Blimp-1 specifies vertebrate slow-twitch muscle fiber identity in response to Hedgehog signaling.
- Authors
Baxendale, Sarah; Davison, Claire; Muxworthy, Claire; Wolff, Christian; Ingham, Philip W; Roy, Sudipto
- Abstract
Vertebrate skeletal muscles comprise distinct fiber types that differ in their morphology, contractile function, mitochondrial content and metabolic properties. Recent studies identified the transcriptional coactivator PGC-1alpha as a key mediator of the physiological stimuli that modulate fiber-type plasticity in postembryonic development. Although myoblasts become fated to differentiate into distinct kinds of fibers early in development, the identities of regulatory proteins that determine embryonic fiber-type specification are still obscure. Here we show that the gene u-boot (ubo), a mutation in which disrupts the induction of embryonic slow-twitch fibers, encodes the zebrafish homolog of Blimp-1, a SET domain-containing transcription factor that promotes the terminal differentiation of B lymphocytes in mammals. Expression of ubo is induced by Hedgehog (Hh) signaling in prospective slow muscle precursors, and its activity alone is sufficient to direct slow-twitch fiber-specific development by naive myoblasts. Our data provide the first molecular insight into the mechanism by which a specific group of muscle precursors is driven along a distinct pathway of fiber-type differentiation in response to positional cues in the vertebrate embryo.
- Publication
Nature genetics, 2004, Vol 36, Issue 1, p88
- ISSN
1061-4036
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1038/ng1280