Novel tools for disrupting gene function in the developing chicken embryo

鸡是人类重要的经济食用动物，鸡胚胎一直是发育生物学家研究的重要模型系统。我们的总体目标是了解控制骨骼生长和发育的调控遗传途径。该建议旨在构建新型载体，以更好地控制我们在鸡胚胎发育过程中操纵基因功能的能力。特别是，由于在卵内敲低鸡胚基因功能的策略尚未广泛使用，我们建议构建和验证逆转录病毒质粒，用于组织特异性递送小RNA，破坏软骨成熟的关键调节因子，以更好地了解它们在骨骼发育中的作用。我们最初的重点将是一个家庭的转录调节因子称为Dlx蛋白，以了解在何种程度上这些基因在软骨衍生的骨骼功能冗余。

The chicken is an economically important food animal for humans and the chicken embryo has long been an important model system for developmental biologists. Our overall goal is to understand the regulatory genetic pathways that control the growth and development of the skeleton. This proposal is directed towards building novel vectors to better control our ability to manipulate gene function during chicken embryo development. In particular, since strategies to knock down gene function in the chick embryo in ovo are not yet widely used, we propose to construct and validate retroviral plasmids for tissue-specific delivery of small RNAs that disrupt key regulators of cartilage maturation in order to better understand their roles in skeletal development. Our initial focus will be on a family of transcriptional regulators called Dlx proteins in order to understand to what extent these genes are functionally redundant in the cartilage-derived skeleton.