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      Advances in the Study of Heart Development and Disease Using Zebrafish

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          Abstract

          Animal models of cardiovascular disease are key players in the translational medicine pipeline used to define the conserved genetic and molecular basis of disease. Congenital heart diseases (CHDs) are the most common type of human birth defect and feature structural abnormalities that arise during cardiac development and maturation. The zebrafish, Danio rerio, is a valuable vertebrate model organism, offering advantages over traditional mammalian models. These advantages include the rapid, stereotyped and external development of transparent embryos produced in large numbers from inexpensively housed adults, vast capacity for genetic manipulation, and amenability to high-throughput screening. With the help of modern genetics and a sequenced genome, zebrafish have led to insights in cardiovascular diseases ranging from CHDs to arrhythmia and cardiomyopathy. Here, we discuss the utility of zebrafish as a model system and summarize zebrafish cardiac morphogenesis with emphasis on parallels to human heart diseases. Additionally, we discuss the specific tools and experimental platforms utilized in the zebrafish model including forward screens, functional characterization of candidate genes, and high throughput applications.

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          Most cited references161

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          The zebrafish reference genome sequence and its relationship to the human genome.

          Zebrafish have become a popular organism for the study of vertebrate gene function. The virtually transparent embryos of this species, and the ability to accelerate genetic studies by gene knockdown or overexpression, have led to the widespread use of zebrafish in the detailed investigation of vertebrate gene function and increasingly, the study of human genetic disease. However, for effective modelling of human genetic disease it is important to understand the extent to which zebrafish genes and gene structures are related to orthologous human genes. To examine this, we generated a high-quality sequence assembly of the zebrafish genome, made up of an overlapping set of completely sequenced large-insert clones that were ordered and oriented using a high-resolution high-density meiotic map. Detailed automatic and manual annotation provides evidence of more than 26,000 protein-coding genes, the largest gene set of any vertebrate so far sequenced. Comparison to the human reference genome shows that approximately 70% of human genes have at least one obvious zebrafish orthologue. In addition, the high quality of this genome assembly provides a clearer understanding of key genomic features such as a unique repeat content, a scarcity of pseudogenes, an enrichment of zebrafish-specific genes on chromosome 4 and chromosomal regions that influence sex determination.
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            Efficient In Vivo Genome Editing Using RNA-Guided Nucleases

            Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems have evolved in bacteria and archaea as a defense mechanism to silence foreign nucleic acids of viruses and plasmids. Recent work has shown that bacterial type II CRISPR systems can be adapted to create guide RNAs (gRNAs) capable of directing site-specific DNA cleavage by the Cas9 nuclease in vitro. Here we show that this system can function in vivo to induce targeted genetic modifications in zebrafish embryos with efficiencies comparable to those obtained using ZFNs and TALENs for the same genes. RNA-guided nucleases robustly enabled genome editing at 9 of 11 different sites tested, including two for which TALENs previously failed to induce alterations. These results demonstrate that programmable CRISPR/Cas systems provide a simple, rapid, and highly scalable method for altering genes in vivo, opening the door to using RNA-guided nucleases for genome editing in a wide range of organisms.
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              The identification of genes with unique and essential functions in the development of the zebrafish, Danio rerio.

              In a large-scale screen, we isolated mutants displaying a specific visible phenotype in embryos or early larvae of the zebrafish, Danio rerio. Males were mutagenized with ethylnitrosourea (ENU) and F2 families of single pair matings between sibling F1 fish, heterozygous for a mutagenized genome, were raised. Egg lays were obtained from several crosses between F2 siblings, resulting in scoring of 3857 mutagenized genomes. F3 progeny were scored at the second, third and sixth day of development, using a stereomicroscope. In a subsequent screen, fixed embryos were analyzed for correct retinotectal projection. A total of 4264 mutants were identified. Two thirds of the mutants displaying rather general abnormalities were eventually discarded. We kept and characterized 1163 mutants. In complementation crosses performed between mutants with similar phenotypes, 894 mutants have been assigned to 372 genes. The average allele frequency is 2.4. We identified genes involved in early development, notochord, brain, spinal cord, somites, muscles, heart, circulation, blood, skin, fin, eye, otic vesicle, jaw and branchial arches, pigment pattern, pigment formation, gut, liver, motility and touch response. Our collection contains alleles of almost all previously described zebrafish mutants. From the allele frequencies and other considerations we estimate that the 372 genes defined by the mutants probably represent more than half of all genes that could have been discovered using the criteria of our screen. Here we give an overview of the spectrum of mutant phenotypes obtained, and discuss the limits and the potentials of a genetic saturation screen in the zebrafish.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                101651414
                43558
                J Cardiovasc Dev Dis
                J Cardiovasc Dev Dis
                Journal of cardiovascular development and disease
                2308-3425
                21 May 2016
                9 April 2016
                June 2016
                20 June 2016
                : 3
                : 2
                : 13
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
                [2 ] Department of Cell Biology and Physiology; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA; lsamsa@ 123456email.unc.edu
                [3 ] McAllister Heart Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
                Author notes
                [* ] Correspondence: jiandong_liu@ 123456med.unc.edu ; Tel.: +1-919-962-0326; Fax: +1-919- 843-2063
                Article
                NIHMS788579
                10.3390/jcdd3020013
                4913704
                27335817
                85741a9c-c1b8-4629-98c7-60dd3b5ccd27

                This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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                Article

                zebrafish,congenital heart disease,cardiomyopathy,cardiac arrhythmia,development,translational medicine,drug screens

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