A Gata4 nuclear GFP transcriptional reporter to study endoderm and cardiac development in the mouse

摘要

The GATA zinc-finger transcription factor GATA4 is expressed in a variety of tissues during mouse embryonic development and in adult organs. These include the primitive endoderm of the blastocyst, visceral endoderm of the early post-implantation embryo, as well as lateral plate mesoderm, developing heart, liver, lung and gonads. Here, we generate a novelGata4targeted allele used to generate both aGata4H2B-GFPtranscriptional reporter and aGata4FLAGfusion protein to analyse dynamic expression domains. We demonstrate that theGata4H2B-GFPtranscriptional reporter faithfully recapitulates known sites ofGata4mRNA expression and correlates with endogenous GATA4 protein levels. This reporter labels nuclei ofGata4expressing cells and is suitable for time-lapse imaging and single cell analyses. As such, thisGata4H2B-GFPallele will be a useful tool for studyingGata4expression and transcriptional regulation.This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.