Transcriptional Profiling of Zebrafish Embryonic Developmental Time Course. Danio rerio

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. Overall design: 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.