Autophagy is essential for cardiac morphogenesis during vertebrate development

This study examined the effects of genetic knockdown of autophagy genes on vertebrate cardiac development We performed microarray studies comparing the hearts of control zebrafish embryos to the hearts of embryos with decreased expression of the autophagy genes atg5, becn1 or atg7. The results provide insight into the role of autophagy in developmental morphogenesis. Hearts were purified from 3 day-old zebrafish embryos injected with control or autophagy gene-specific morpholino oligonucleotides. RNA was prepared from all samples and hybridized to zebrafish-specific Affymetricx arrays.