Structural comparison of zebrafish elav/Hu and their differential expressions during neurogenesis

The present communication reports the isolation and characterization of thr ee new zebrafish elav/Hu (Kim, C.-H., Ueshima, E., Muraoka, O., Tanaka, H., Yeo, S.-Y., Huh, T.-L. and Miki, N., Zebrafish elav/HuC homologue as a ver y early neuronal marker. Neurosci. Lett., 216 (1996) 109-112) homologues, H UA, HUD and HUG. While HuA and HUG showed weak and ubiquitous expressions, HUD, as well as HuC, were specifically expressed in the neuronal cells. The first expression of HuD was detectable of the 10-somite stage, that is, se veral hours later than HUG. After 24 h of embryonic development, although H uD and HuC expressions overlapped overall, the cells expressing HUD were re stricted to subsets of the HuC-positive neuronal cells in the brain and spi nal cord. These differentially regulated spatial and temporal expression pa tterns implied distinct roles for HUC and HUD in neuronal determination and neuronal differentiation, respectively. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.