RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Optimizing spinal cord injury in zebrafish larvae: effects of age on the injury response
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2023.05.18.541337
DO 10.1101/2023.05.18.541337
A1 Kirsten L. Underwood
A1 Whitney J. Walker
A1 Patrick I. Garrett
A1 Shannon Linch
A1 Thomas P. Rynes
A1 Karen Mruk
YR 2023
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/05/18/2023.05.18.541337.abstract
AB Zebrafish are an increasingly popular model to study spinal cord injury (SCI) regeneration. The transparency of larval zebrafish makes them ideal to study cellular processes in real time. Standardized approaches, including age of injury, are not readily available making comparisons of the results with other models challenging. In this study, we systematically examined the response to spinal cord transection of larval zebrafish at three different ages (3-7 days post fertilization or dpf) to determine whether the developmental complexity of the central nervous system affects the overall response to SCI. We then used imaging and behavioral analysis to evaluate whether differences existed based on the age of injury. All ages of larval zebrafish upregulated the required genes for glial bridge formation, ctgfa and gfap, at the site of injury, consistent with studies from adult zebrafish. Though all larval ages upregulated factors required to promote glial bridging, young larval zebrafish (3 dpf) were better able to regenerate axons independent of the glial bridge, unlike older zebrafish (7 dpf). Consistent with this data, locomotor experiments demonstrated that some swimming behavior occurs independent of glial bridge formation, further highlighting the need for standardization of this model and recovery assays. Overall, we found subtle cellular differences based on the age of transection in zebrafish, underlining the importance of considering age when designing experiments aimed at understanding regeneration.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.