Expression and characterization of the zebrafish orthologue of the human FOLR1 gene during embryogenesis

• Published in: Gene Expression Patterns 2017-11, Vol.25-26, p.159-166
• Main Authors: Jones, RoJenia N., Erhard, Stephanie A., Malham, Mark R., Gen, Ayaz Y., Sullivan, Kyle, Olsen, Kenneth W., Dale, Rodney M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Computational Biology; Conserved Sequence; Embryonic Development; Folate Receptor 1 - chemistry; Folate Receptor 1 - genetics; Folate Receptor 1 - metabolism; Folic acid; Gene Expression Profiling - methods; Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; Humans; In Situ Hybridization; Metabolism; Nutrition; Phylogeny; Targeted cancer therapy; Zebrafish - embryology; Zebrafish - genetics; Zebrafish - metabolism; Zebrafish Proteins - chemistry; Zebrafish Proteins - genetics; Zebrafish Proteins - metabolism
• ISSN: 1567-133X; 1872-7298
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gep.2017.08.002

It has been well established that many types of rapidly dividing normal and diseased cells require an increased amount of folate for DNA replication and repair as well as cellular metabolism. Thus one of folate's cognate receptors, Folate Receptor 1 (FOLR1) is usually up-regulated in rapidly dividing cells, including many types of cancerous tumors. Because zebrafish have become a model organism for understanding conserved vertebrate cellular pathways and human disease, there has been an increased need to identify and elucidate orthologous zebrafish genes that are central to known human maladies. The cells of all early animal embryos go through a phase of rapid division (cleavage) where particular cell cycle checkpoints are skipped until a specification event occurs directing these embryonic stem cells to their fated germ layer cell type. Interestingly, this rapid cell division that ignores cell cycle checkpoints is also observed in many cancers. Developing blastula and tumor cells both require folr1 expression to obtain folate. In this report we have identified the expression pattern of the zebrafish gene zgc:165502, located on chromosome 15. Using computational and comparative methods and molecular biology techniques such as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and whole mount in situ hybridization (WISH) during embryogenesis, we demonstrate that zgc:165502 is the zebrafish orthologue of the human FOLR1 gene. Understanding when and where FOLR1 orthologues are expressed in different biomedical model organisms such as the zebrafish will help researchers design better experiments to study the endogenous FOLR1 activity. •Zebrafish gene zgc:165502 on chromosome 15 is an orthologue of human Folate Receptor 1.•The zebrafish folr1 gene is expressed globally during cleavage and gastrulation.•At 1 day post-fertilization and beyond we see a tissue specific restriction of folr1 expression.•Dye conjugated to folate can be selectively taken up into cells that have expressed the folr1 gene.