Project description:To comprehensively understand the genes affected by beta-arrestin1 depletion in zebrafish fish embryos at 12 hpf, microarray analysis was performed. As controls, zebrafish embryos depleted of beta-arrestin2 and double depletion of beta-arrestin1 and beta-arrestin2 were also analyzed.
Project description:Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) has been shown to target developing vasculature in piscine and mammalian model systems. In the zebrafish, MTBE induces vascular lesions throughout development. These lesions result from exposure to MTBE at an early stage in development (6-somites to Prim-5 stages). During this time period, transcript levels of vegfa, vegfc, and vegfr1 were significantly decreased in embryos exposed to 5 mM MTBE. We performed global gene analysis as an unbiased approach to discover possible modes of action of MTBE vascular toxicity. Embryos were exposed at 3 hours post fertilization (hpf) in triplicate to one of three concentrations of MTBE: 5mM (induces vascular lesions and significantly decreases vegfa), 0.625mM (NOAEL; no observed adverse effect level), and 0.00625mM (100-fold below NOAEL), or to embryo media (control). Samples were collected at 6-somites (~15hpf), 21-somites (~24 hpf), and Prim-5 (~30 hpf) stages of development. Embryos were meticulously staged at exposure and at the time of collection to maintain a homogeneous population. Our experimental design sought to explore the effect of three concentrations MTBE on three different stages of zebrafish embryonic development during the critical period established for the chemical. This time period also corresponds to an important time in the cardiovascular system develop of our model vertebrate.
Project description:In this experiment, we've examined chromatin conformation of zebrafish embryos at 24 and 48 hours post-fertilization (hpf), as well as 48 hpf fibroblasts. The aim of this study was to characterise the 3D chromatin structure of zebrafish and perform an evolutionary comparison with mammalian genomes (Homo sapiens and Mus musculus) focusing on syntenic regions and zebrafish ohnologs (duplicated genes that were kept in the genome after the third round of whole-genome duplication).
