Gene expression during gastrulation

[jones106]

Hey guys, I've got a developmental question for yall. How would you experimentally compare gene expression during gastrulation in birds with that in frogs?
I've been racking my brain trying to think of this, and the only way I can think of is to use a microarray, since it allows you to look at so many different genes. However, I'm not sure if this is useful for comparing gene expression in two different animals. Can you use this method? Is there some sort of recombination/transplantation/knockout experiment you could use? Thanks.

 

[jones106]

I think in-situ hybridization is the way to go

 

[Moonbear]

If you're just looking for the time course of when genes get turned on, either approach would work. It depends on what your overall objectives are. If you're just trying to screen for many genes at once, microarray is good for that. If you have just one in mind, in situ hybridization will work, with the benefit of giving you information on where expression is occurring. RT-PCR could also be used to identify individual genes, but without the regional specificity of in situ hybridization.

None of these methods would work well to compare levels of expression quantitatively between two different species, because they all would require species-specific primers. However, if you had a gene of interest that was highly conserved between the two species, so that you could use the same primer, then you could use quantitative RT-PCR to compare the amount of gene expression.