Use of zebrafish for cardiovascular research is expanding towards research on adult hearts. For these applications, quick and simple isolation of cardiac tissues is key to avoid post-mortem changes and to obtain an adequate number of samples. Here, we describe a fast and reproducible method for dissecting adult zebrafish hearts.
Anvendelse af zebrafisk modelsystem til undersøgelse udvikling, regenerering og sygdom ekspanderer mod brug af voksne hjerter for celledissociering og oprensning af RNA, DNA og proteiner. Alle disse applikationer kræver en hurtig genopretning af et betydeligt antal zebrafisk hjerter for at undgå gen regulering, metaboliske og andre ændringer, der begynder efter døden. Voksne zebrafisk hjerter er også påkrævet for at studere hjerte struktur for en række forskellige mutanter og til at studere hjerte regenerering. Men den traditionelle zebrafisk hjerte dissektion er langsom og vanskelig og kræver specialiserede værktøjer, hvilket gør store dissektion af voksne zebrafisk hjerter trættende. Traditionelle metoder harbour også risikoen for at beskadige hjertet under dissektion. Her beskriver vi en metode til dissektion af voksne zebrafisk hjerter, der er hurtig, reproducerbar, og bevarer hjerte arkitektur. Hertil kommer, at denne metode ikke kræver specialiserede værktøjer, er smertefri for zebrafisk,kan udføres på friske eller faste prøver, og kan udføres på zebrafisk så unge som en måned gammel. Den beskrevne fremgangsmåde udvider brugen af voksne zebrafisk for kardiovaskulær forskning.
Zebrafish are an excellent model for studying heart development and human disease1,2. Specific advantages include the translucent nature of zebrafish embryos, the availability of many genetic mutants and transgenic reporter lines, and the availability of genome editing technologies. In addition to their advantages for studying early heart development, zebrafish are an ideal system for studying vertebrate heart regeneration3.
More recently, adult zebrafish are playing an important part in bioinformatics approaches to studying cardiovascular development and disease, due to their relatively large clutch size and relatively quick and inexpensive breeding compared to other vertebrate models. Promising techniques include ribosome profiling, RNA-Seq, and cell dissociation and FACS sorting4-7. However, for these techniques the quality of the data can depend on obtaining a large number of samples in a rapid, efficient, and reproducible manner, before gene regulatory, metabolic, transcriptional, and other changes occur.
Dissection of adult zebrafish organs has been described in the past8,9. However, previous approaches to dissection of the heart were slow, ran the risk of damaging the heart during dissection, required special tools, and/or required fixation of the zebrafish prior to dissection; for these reasons, past approaches to zebrafish adult heart dissection were not optimized for high-throughput applications and/or applications requiring fresh tissue.
Here, we describe a method for adult zebrafish heart dissection that is simple, fast, efficient, and reproducible, while preserving cardiac morphology. This method does not include cutting into the pericardial space and therefore does not risk damaging the heart during dissection. Instead, this method relies on anatomical landmarks of the zebrafish, and therefore, it is highly reproducible. This dissection method is also versatile in that it can be used on fresh or fixed fish, and on zebrafish as young as one month old. Finally, this method results in minimal suffering to the zebrafish because after anesthesia and/or rapid cooling, the fish is additionally decapitated and pithed in the course of the dissection procedure.
Selv om der er beskrevet fremgangsmåder til at dissekere den voksne zebrafisk hjertet, disse metoder var tidskrævende og almindeligt forårsaget skade på hjertet under dissektion. For at udføre eksperimenter, hvor et stort antal voksne hjerter kan være behov for, og / eller når undgå forringelse af hjerte væv er vigtig for downstream-applikationer, den tid, der kræves ved hjælp af traditionelle dissektion teknikker er uoverkommelig. Ligeledes er vigtig for undersøgelse af hjertet struktur og til immunhistokem…
The authors have nothing to disclose.
The authors would like to thank Dr. Shaun Coughlin for hosting the filming of this procedure in his laboratory, and for general support. R.A. was supported by the NIH (F32HL110489) and the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation. S.R. was supported by a Research Fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the American Heart Association (AHA). D.Y.R.S was supported by the NIH (RO1HL54737), the Packard Foundation, and the Max Planck Society.
small tank for transporting fish | Aquaneering | ZHCT100 | |
fish net | Petsmart | 36-16731 | |
250mL glass beaker | Kimble | 14005-250 | |
9cm polystyrene petri dish | Nunc | 172958 | |
razor blade | Personna American Safety Razor Company | 94-120-71 | |
two Dumont #5SF forceps | Fine Science Tools | 11252-00 | |
dissecting microscope | Olympus | SZX16 | |
Tricaine | Sigma | A-5040 | |
plastic transfer pipette | Thermo Scientific | 202-20S | |
gooseneck light source | Dolan-Jenner Industries, Inc | Fiber-Lite 180 Illuminator, 181 Dual Gooseneck System | |
fluorescent light source | Lumen Dynamics | X-Cite 120Q | optional |
micro-scissors | Biomedical Research Instruments, Inc | 11-1000 | optional |
RBC Lysis Buffer | eBioscience | 00-4333-57 | optional |