Abstract
The technique of in situ hybridization can be used to visualize the spatial and temporal pattern of gene expression during development. Ascidians are invertebrate chordates that develop with a fixed cell cleavage pattern into a tadpole larvae. The knowledge of the cell lineage allows the earliest steps of cell fate specification to be followed at a single cell resolution. This protocol describes preparation of Ciona intestinalis embryos, classical in situ hybridization protocol coupled with nuclear staining, and a guide to identify gene expression in specific precursors of the developing brain at neural plate stages of development.
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Acknowledgments
The author is a CNRS researcher in the laboratory of Hitoyoshi Yasuo. I would like to thank H. Yasuo and Cathy Sirour for their help and for critical reading of the manuscript. Many thanks to Hiroki Nishida and Shih Yu (Osaka University) for kindly sharing their DAPI staining and mounting protocol and agreeing to publish it in this chapter. This work was supported by Central National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Sorbonne Université, Sorbonne Université Emegence project (2016), and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-09-BLAN-0013-01, ANR-17-CE13-0003).
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Hudson, C. (2020). A Simple Method to Identify Ascidian Brain Lineage Cells at Neural Plate Stages Following In Situ Hybridization. In: Sprecher, S. (eds) Brain Development. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2047. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9732-9_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9732-9_18
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