Expression of gene CG13427 in Drosophila embryo and its regulation by the transcription factor Zelda

This study focuses on the moiety influencing gene expression in Drosophila embryonic development, including RNA polymerase II, transcription factor (TF) Zelda, and interactive neighboring genes. The CG13427 gene in Drosophila was used as an experimental model. Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) was conducted to examine the DNA sequence targeted by Polymerase II and Zelda at different time points. Since previous evidence indicates that Zelda may play a key role in activating the zygotic genome, a well-controlled experiment here was designed to investigate whether the expression of adjacent genes would be interrupted if Zld-binding sites in one gene are abolished hence determining the correlation. Based on the research works done by Y. Ma and Rushlow (unpublished data), the exact binding site of Zelda in the CG13427 was found at the CAGGTAG motif. Therefore, a series of experiments were designed to investigate how Zelda affects the expression of CG13427 in Drosophila embryos. Validation experiments were subsequently designed using gene editing tools to abolish CAGGTAG when the mutation was introduced to further verify the previous findings.