A laser pointer driven microheater for precise local heating and conditional gene regulation in vivo. Microheater driven gene regulation in zebrafish.

Background: Tissue heating has been employed to study a variety of biological processes, including the study of genes that control embryonic development. Conditional regulation of gene expression is a particularly powerful approach for understanding gene function. One popular method for mis-expressing a gene of interest employs heat-inducible heat shock protein (hsp) promoters.