LE3 .A278 2016

2016

Walker, Allison

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Biology

Biology

This work focused on studying the genes involved in innate immunity in zebrafish. Total mRNA was isolated from various zebrafish tissues (i.e., liver, kidney, and male and female gonad tissue) then reverse transcribed. cDNA was then screened using PCRs with gene specific primers to determine which transcriptional signature genes of innate immunity were being expressed in each tissue type. Genes of interest were Tbx21, Id2, Eomes1 and Zbtb16a. The above experiments included designing novel primer pairs for the amplification of Tbx21 and Zbtb16a. Agarose gel electrophoresis results indicated the presence of mRNA transcripts of Eomes1 and Tbx21 in kidney, and male and female gonad tissues (i.e., not in liver); the presence of Id2 transcripts in all tissues; the strong presence of Zbtb16a transcripts in male and female gonad tissue, and the faint presence of transcripts in kidney samples. Our detection of the presence of Zbtb16a –the zebrafish homologue of PLZF, is a transcriptional signature of natural killer T (NKT) cells in mice–in a zebrafish immune organ (i.e. kidney) may be indicative of the presence of NKT cells in this species. Semi-quantitative analysis of gene expression in the respective tissue types can be used to make decisions as to which genes of interest and which tissue types should be explored quantitatively in future studies.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1479