A Gata4 nuclear GFP transcriptional reporter to study endoderm and cardiac development in the mouse

The GATA zinc-finger transcription factor GATA4 is expressed in a variety of tissues during mouse embryonic development and in adult organs. These include the primitive endoderm of the blastocyst, visceral endoderm of the early post-implantation embryo, as well as lateral plate mesoderm, developing heart, liver, lung and gonads. Here, we generate a novel Gata4 targeted allele used to generate both a Gata4(H2B-GFP) transcriptional reporter and a Gata4(FLAG) fusion protein to analyse dynamic expression domains. We demonstrate that the Gata4(H2B-GFP) transcriptional reporter faithfully recapitulates known sites of Gata4 mRNA expression and correlates with endogenous GATA4 protein levels. This reporter labels nuclei of Gata4 expressing cells and is suitable for time-lapse imaging and single cell analyses. As such, this Gata4(H2B-GFP) allele will be a useful tool for studying Gata4 expression and transcriptional regulation. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.