Transcriptional Profiling of Zebrafish Embryonic Developmental Time Course

Coordinated cell movements of gastrulation reshape the uniform blastula into a structured gastrula with three fundamental axes and an internal germ layer of mesoderm. Genetic regulation of the forces which drive gastrulation is incompletely understood. We employed a microarray screen in zebrafish for genes which are dynamically expressed during embryonic development. In particular, we were interested in exploring genes that are expressed during the gastrulation. No biological replicates were performed. Each of the nine time points was co-hybridized with a reference sample made by pooling RNA from each time point. The microarray schema incorporated dye swapped hybridizations to account for dye bias.