GREEN FLUORESCENT FUSION PROTEINS - POWERFUL TOOLS FOR MONITORING PROTEIN EXPRESSION IN LIVE ZEBRAFISH EMBRYOS

The recent development of transgenic technology in zebrafish has opene d an exciting new avenue in which to explore vertebrate development. H owever, as in other species, the inability to easily identify live tra nsgenic fish severely limits the potential of this promising technolog y. To determine whether the recently described green fluorescent prote in (GFP) might provide a convenient live staining method in zebrafish, we constructed a glutathione S-transferase/GFP fusion protein (GST-GF P). GST-GFP cRNA, when injected into individual blastomeres of early z ebrafish embryos, resulted in the rapid development (3 hr) of easily d etectable green fluorescence which persisted for up to 4 days. GFP flu orescence was restricted to progeny of the injected cell and appeared to have no adverse effects on embryonic development despite widespread expression. Our findings demonstrate that GFP fusion proteins will pr ovide a simple yet powerful means of monitoring production of heterolo gous proteins in live zebrafish. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.