Overview of Rodent Zic Genes.

Adv Exp Med Biol

Early Mammalian Development Laboratory, John Curtin School of Medical Research, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Published: July 2018

AI Article Synopsis

  • The five murine Zic genes encode multifunctional transcriptional regulators crucial for embryonic development, showing strong conservation with their human counterparts.
  • Each ZIC protein has a zinc finger domain that allows it to interact with DNA and other proteins, linking it to key signaling pathways like SHH, WNT, and NODAL.
  • The complex interactions among ZIC proteins highlight their redundant and unique functions, suggesting future research can benefit from advancements in genome engineering and functional genomics.

Article Abstract

The five murine Zic genes encode multifunctional transcriptional regulator proteins important for a large number of processes during embryonic development. The genes and proteins are highly conserved with respect to the orthologous human genes, an attribute evidently mirrored by functional conservation, since the murine and human genes mutate to give the same phenotypes. Each ZIC protein contains a zinc finger domain that participates in both protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions. The ZIC proteins are capable of interacting with the key transcriptional mediators of the SHH, WNT and NODAL signalling pathways as well as with components of the transcriptional machinery and chromatin-modifying complexes. It is possible that this diverse range of protein partners underlies characteristics uncovered by mutagenesis and phenotyping of the murine Zic genes. These features include redundant and unique roles for ZIC proteins, regulatory interdependencies amongst family members and pleiotropic Zic gene function. Future investigations into the complex nature of the Zic gene family activity should be facilitated by recent advances in genome engineering and functional genomics.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7311-3_10DOI Listing

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