Analysis of a conditional gene trap reveals that tbx5a is required for heart regeneration in zebrafish

Abstract

© 2018 Grajevskaja et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The ability to conditionally inactivate genes is instrumental for fine genetic analysis of all biological processes, but is especially important for studies of biological events, such as regeneration, which occur late in ontogenesis or in adult life. We have constructed and tested a fully conditional gene trap vector, and used it to inactivate tbx5a in the cardiomyocytes of larval and adult zebrafish. We observe that loss of tbx5a function significantly impairs the ability of zebrafish hearts to regenerate after ventricular resection, indicating that Tbx5a plays an essential role in the transcriptional program of heart regeneration.