Subject collection: Zebrafish as a Disease Model
- Modelling pancreatic β-cell inflammation in zebrafish identifies the natural product wedelolactone for human islet protection
Summary: A model of islet inflammation in zebrafish exhibits functional β-cell silencing and a lack of glucose responsiveness. A natural compound that rescues the glucose defect in zebrafish can protect human islets from inflammation.
- Hypoxia and connectivity in the developing vertebrate nervous system
Summary: The nervous system's exposure to hypoxia has developmental and clinical relevance. In this Review, the authors discuss the effects of hypoxia on the development of the CNS, and its long-term behavioral and neurodevelopmental consequences.
- Collagen COL22A1 maintains vascular stability and mutations in COL22A1 are potentially associated with intracranial aneurysms
Summary: Collagen COL22A1 is expressed in perivascular fibroblast-like cells and is required to maintain vascular stability in a zebrafish model. Mutations in COL22A1 are likely to be associated with intracranial aneurysms.
- Macrophages enhance Vegfa-driven angiogenesis in an embryonic zebrafish tumour xenograft model
Summary: Zebrafish embryonic macrophages associate with the distal tips of tumour xenograft blood vessels and are required for Vegfa-driven angiogenesis.
- Generation of mouse-zebrafish hematopoietic tissue chimeric embryos for hematopoiesis and host-pathogen interaction studies
Editor's choice: A new method to xenotransplant murine bone marrow cells into zebrafish blastulae that generates hundreds of transient chimeric animals with functional murine blood progenitor cells and innate immune cells.
- One month of hyperglycemia alters spectral responses of the zebrafish photopic electroretinogram
Summary: Zebrafish can be used to examine diabetic complications, including vision loss. Here, in zebrafish, we show that prolonged (4 week) hyperglycemia causes an inflammatory response associated with functional deficits localized to specific cone types.
- Functional testing of a human PBX3 variant in zebrafish reveals a potential modifier role in congenital heart defects
Summary: This study uses genome editing in zebrafish to demonstrate that a human DNA sequence variant of unknown significance might contribute to the complex genetics of congenital heart defects.
- CRISPR/Cas9-mediated homology-directed repair by ssODNs in zebrafish induces complex mutational patterns resulting from genomic integration of repair-template fragments
Summary: NGS-based analysis reveals that CRISPR/Cas9-induced double-strand-break repair using single-stranded repair templates is error prone in zebrafish, resulting in complex patterns of integrated repair-template fragments.
- Effective CRISPR/Cas9-based nucleotide editing in zebrafish to model human genetic cardiovascular disorders
Summary: By using a single-stranded DNA oligonucleotide template in combination with CRISPR/Cas9 in zebrafish, the authors achieved effective germline-transmissible introduction of patient-specific single-nucleotide changes related to cardiovascular disease.