Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Dec 8;9(12):2634.
doi: 10.3390/cells9122634.

Rho GTPases Signaling in Zebrafish Development and Disease

Marie-José Boueid  1 , Aya Mikdache  1 , Emilie Lesport  1 , Cindy Degerny  1 , Marcel Tawk  1
Affiliations
Review

Rho GTPases Signaling in Zebrafish Development and Disease

Marie-José Boueid et al. Cells. .

Abstract

Cells encounter countless external cues and the specificity of their responses is translated through a myriad of tightly regulated intracellular signals. For this, Rho GTPases play a central role and transduce signals that contribute to fundamental cell dynamic and survival events. Here, we review our knowledge on how zebrafish helped us understand the role of some of these proteins in a multitude of in vivo cellular behaviors. Zebrafish studies offer a unique opportunity to explore the role and more specifically the spatial and temporal dynamic of Rho GTPases activities within a complex environment at a level of details unachievable in any other vertebrate organism.

Keywords: Cdc42; GAP; GEF; Rac; RhoA; small GTPases; zebrafish.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Role of Elmo1/Rac1 signaling during zebrafish Schwann cell development. Elmo1 acts in association with Dock1 to enhance Rac-specific guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) activity of Dock1 by mediating a GDP to GTP exchange on Rac1. Elmo1 function is linked to Rac1 activity within Schwann cells and contributes to the radial sorting process in which a Schwann cell associates with a single axonal segment via cytoskeletal rearrangements. SC, Schwann cell.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic illustration of the main activities of Rac1, Cdc42 and RhoA in zebrafish and some of their regulators. NC, Neural Crest; SC, Schwann cell.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aspenstrom P., Ruusala A., Pacholsky D. Taking Rho GTPases to the next level: The cellular functions of atypical Rho GTPases. Exp. Cell Res. 2007;313:3673–3679. doi: 10.1016/j.yexcr.2007.07.022. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Riou P., Villalonga P., Ridley A.J. Rnd proteins: Multifunctional regulators of the cytoskeleton and cell cycle progression. Bioessays. 2010;32:986–992. doi: 10.1002/bies.201000060. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Salas-Vidal E., Meijer A.H., Cheng X., Spaink H.P. Genomic annotation and expression analysis of the zebrafish Rho small GTPase family during development and bacterial infection. Genomics. 2005;86:25–37. doi: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2005.03.010. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bakkers J., Kramer C., Pothof J., Quaedvlieg N.E., Spaink H.P., Hammerschmidt M. Has2 is required upstream of Rac1 to govern dorsal migration of lateral cells during zebrafish gastrulation. Development. 2004;131:525–537. doi: 10.1242/dev.00954. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Li Y.L., Shao M., Shi D.L. Rac1 signalling coordinates epiboly movement by differential regulation of actin cytoskeleton in zebrafish. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2017;490:1059–1065. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2017.06.165. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources