Cloning of gene fragment of estrogen receptor-βand its expression in mouse embryo

In order to study the expression and regulation effects of estrogen receptor-beta (ERbeta) in the development of mouse embryo, the primer of ERbeta was designed, the ERbeta fragment was first obtained by RT-PCR and subcloned into plasmids pGEM- 3Z, then the recombinant plasmids were linearized with the restriction enzymes of EcoRand Hind. Using Sp6 and T7 RNA polymerase, the digoxigenin(dig) labeled sense and anti-sense probes were transcriped in vitro, respectively. Then the expression of ERbeta in mouse embryo was examined with the probes by whole-mount in situ hybridization. The results indicated that ERbeta is expressed in the brain, spinal neural tube, genital ridge, pericardium, limb bud and mandibular arch of 10.5 dpc embryo, and is also expressed in the telencephalon, mesencephalon, medulla oblongata, spinal cord and limb bud of 13.5 dpc embryo. These results suggest that ERbeta maybe play a role of regulation in sexual differentiation, primal differentiation of neural tube, further differentiation of three primary cerebral vesicles and spinal cord, generation and differentiation of bone and cartilage of limb bud, development of pericardium and configuration differentiation of mandibular in mouse embryo.