{"doi":"10.3791/65733","title":"Optogenetic Signaling Activation in Zebrafish Embryos","abstract":"Signaling pathways orchestrate fundamental biological processes, including development, regeneration, homeostasis, and disease. Methods to experimentally manipulate signaling are required to understand how signaling is interpreted in these wide-ranging contexts. Molecular optogenetic tools can provide reversible, tunable manipulations of signaling pathway activity with a high degree of spatiotemporal control and have been applied in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo. These tools couple light-responsive protein domains, such as the blue light homodimerizing light-oxygen-voltage sensing (LOV) domain, with signaling effectors to confer light-dependent experimental control over signaling. This protocol provides practical guidelines for using the LOV-based bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) and Nodal signaling activators bOpto-BMP and bOpto-Nodal in the optically accessible early zebrafish embryo. It describes two control experiments: A quick phenotype assay to determine appropriate experimental conditions, and an immunofluorescence assay to directly assess signaling. Together, these control experiments can help establish a pipeline for using optogenetic tools in early zebrafish embryos. These strategies provide a powerful platform to investigate the roles of signaling in development, health, and physiology.","journal":"Journal of Visualized Experiments","year":2023,"id":356426,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9563,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1105134,"name":"Catherine E. Rogers","orcid":"0009-0002-5594-0764","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":473423,"name":"Marcial Garmendia‐Cedillos","orcid":"0000-0002-1013-1835","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":452763,"name":"Thomas J. Pohida","orcid":"0000-0002-6093-2251","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1105135,"name":"Katherine W. Rogers","orcid":"0000-0001-5700-2662","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1105554,"name":"Allison J. Saul","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":65,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:13:25.429924Z","pmid":"37955383","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}