Microarray Analysis of Hox Genes in Zebrafish

Here I am again. I've been off for a while, so let me talk about my talk of last Thursday. I wanted to make a post before, right after my talk, but when I finally managed to escape from the symposium (sadly, I missed the drinks :-( I wrote something that in the end was lost in the cyberspace :'-(

The talk was quite OK, taking into account the circumstances. I finished it the night before the presentation, but it didn't make any difference. The issue here is that I didn't want to give the talk, I was appointed to do so without asking, and whereas the rest of the people were at least finishing Ph.D. students, hence with a lot of results to show, I had to present the results of 4 months in the lab -- that fit into 3 slides. The rest of the presentation was about the whole project and mainly future plans. Unsurprisingly I only got a question, and it was from a guy from my lab (I guess he did ask so I had at least a question).

Alas, it's now done and over. I will present something properly in due time and that will be the important one. By the way, for those of you interested in what I am doing, here goes the abstract:

Microarray analysis of hox genes in the zebrafish
Maximiliano Corredor
Institute of Biology, Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Hox genes are a family of transcription factors of high relevance in development. These genes are clustered in genomic complexes and the arrangement of individual genes within these clusters correlates with their spatio-temporal pattern of expression. We have analysed the genomic organization of the hox genes in the zebrafish, comparing previous knowledge with the recently available genomic sequence in order to have the more complete picture of their organization possible. By doing so we have found a gene previously undescribed, hoxb13a. Some preliminary data of its expression patterns will be shown.
Using the information obtained, we will develop a microarray to characterise their pattern of expression in key developmental and physiological processes, mainly fin development and regeneration. This will lead us to a better knowledge of the regulation of the hox genes in these processes, their downstream targets and particularly analyse the importance of changes in temporal patterns of gene expression.


That was all, folks!