Danio rerio cultivar:Danio rerio Transcriptome or Gene expression. Danio rerio cultivar:Danio rerio

Tight junctions are essential in the maintenance of the integrity of epithelial and endothelial cells, of which cingulin is a core element. Cingulin has been reported to be expressed in multiple inner ear structures, indicating an intimate link between cingulin and the auditory organs. Zebrafish is morphologically and functionally similar with mammalian inner ear, and is popular as a model organism for hearing research. Using whole mount in situ hybridization (WISH) experiment, we detected the expression of cingulin b in the posterior lateral line system (pLLs) of zebrafish. We traced the early development progress of zebrafish pLLs from 36 hpf to 72 hpf, and found that inhibition of cingulin b by target morpholinos resulted in severe developmental obstruction, including decreased number of neuromasts, reduced proliferative cells in the primordium, and repressed hair cell differentiation to form mature neuromasts. The KEGG enrichment analysis revealed that MAPK signaling pathway and cellular senescence were the key pathways with most differently expressed genes (DEGs) between cingulin b knockdown samples and the controls. Furthermore, quantitative RT-PCR analysis confirmed the findings by RNA-seq that the transcript levels of cell cycle negative regulators such as tp53 and cdkn1a, were remarkably upregulated after inhibition of cingulin b. Our results therefore revealed that cingulin b is essential in the development of auditory organs, and MAPK signaling pathway was inhibited while cellular senescence pathway was activated after downregulation of cingulin b. We bring forwards new insights of cingulin by exploring its function in auditory system.