In vivo expression vector derived from anhydrobiotic tardigrade genome enables live imaging in Eutardigrada.

ABSTRACT: Water is essential for life, but anhydrobiotic tardigrades can survive almost complete dehydration. Anhydrobiosis has been a biological enigma for more than a century with respect to how organisms sustain life without water, but the few choices of genetic toolkits available in tardigrade research have been a challenging circumstance. Here, we report the development of an in vivo expression system for tardigrades. This transient transgenic technique is based on a plasmid vector (TardiVec) with promoters that originated from an anhydrobiotic tardigrade Ramazzottius varieornatus. It enables the introduction of GFP-fused proteins and genetically encoded indicators such as the Ca²⁺ indicator GCaMP into tardigrade cells; consequently, the dynamics of proteins and cells in tardi

SUBMITTER: Tanaka S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9945988 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature