Abstracts Biological Sciences

Formation of the musculoskeletal system during the craniofacial development of zebrafish

by Henning Onsbring Gustafson

The musculoskeletal system supports the internal structures of the body and consists of bones, ligaments, muscles and tendons. This system forms during early embryonic development, a process where many components today are unknown. In order to get a better understanding for those developmental steps, fluorescent in situ hybridisation has been performed on five genes. All five genes represent different transcription factors. These genes were selected based on the assumption that they could be important for the formation of the musculoskeletal system. After in situ hybridisation was performed, embryos were stained by immunohistochemistry to get a reference signal in the cartilage to enable easier interpretation of the expression pattern. In this study four of the selected transcription factors, Scleraxis a , Scleraxis b , Mohawk a and Mohawk b turned out to be expressed close to points where muscles are attached to the cartilage elements in the zebrafish head. Therefore, these genes are good candidates for future functional studies of muscle attachment development.