Zebrafish Flashcards
is the eye part of the brain?
yes- it is part of the central nervous system
what is the most highly conserved part of the nervous system?
the brain
is the fish eye similar to the human eye? why is the zebrafish better than a mouse for this study
ys- it has good visual acuity, colour vision. The mouse isn’t good because the mouse has poor vision - nocturnal animal
why are zebrafish a good fish organism ?
they are very tough and easy to look after
what are the main reasons why zebrafish are used a model system?
- vetrebrates- share the body plan
- they have rapid development - day or so development to swimming from egg
- available all year round
why are amphibians good for vert model organisms? why are they not?
- used to find organiser
- good for misimpression etc- injecting RNA etc
- they are weak at genetic studies- can do it but it is hard bcause they have long life cycles- generation times, tetraploid
why are birds good vert model organism? why not?
not good for genetic analysis- egg gets in the way- very hard
- good for classical genetics
why are mice a good vert model system?
they are extremely good for genetics- can do very elegant studies.
- a downfall is that they are bad to study early development because the little mouse is inside the mother
- the mouse is large too so hard to observe development
- optically transparent- can see every single cell in the fish
- excellent genetics- can inject RNA MOs and make transgenics
- good embryology - good stages
- there is a great deal of conservation
what are the 4 main processes in zebrafish development?
epiboly, involution, convergence and extension movements
is the yolk independent from the embryo in zebrafish, why is this significant?
the cells do not contain yolk- develop on top of the yolk so the embryo is basically transparent
how can you observe the types of cell movements that occur in the embryo during different stages ind development ?
- you can actually use a microscope and zoom in to follow different cell divisions just with the eye
- light sheet imaging: allow you to very rapidly image many points in space at almost the same time: the light shines through the sample and illuminates and things are in focus at one time. You can then use a nuclear label (such as DAPI) within an embryo and then follow them over time in the entire embryo. Then you can I’ve each dot an identity and code for different parameters: direction, speed etc.
how can you use light sheet microscopy and computer programmes to look at different cell characteristics during development.
: the light shines through the sample and illuminates and things are in focus at one time. You can then use a nuclear label (such as DAPI) within an embryo and then follow them over time in the entire embryo. Then you can I’ve each dot an identity and code for different parameters: direction, speed etc. - you can do this for an entire embryo
- you can also do this in a reverse way and home in on nucleus of cells of one tissue type- for example in the ear and then rewinds and look where these cells came from
- you can then compare this to mutants and see how development changes
how can you use microscopy to look at the changes in proliferation in the embryo?
- use sheet microscopy for the entire embryo
- you can label the nuclei for different phases of the cel cycle- green for cell in proliferative and red for post mitotic- do this by tagging cell cycle proteins with different colours by producing transgenic translational reporter constructs and injected- because these proteins are degraded at the different cycle stages
- you can then see that as development more cell types become post mitotic and the order in which tissues that do this
- you can identify regions where proliferation is ongoing- in the stem cell sight
how can mutations to do with the optic chiasm and some brain defects be viewed
can be viewed just b under the microscope- can object dyes into the neurons to stain them
what type of mutation was found by using a stain of the brain connections?
pax2 who causes defects in optic chiasm
what stain can be used to view chiasm?
Bodipy-ceramide labeling
once you have found pax2 involved in commissar formation, how can you find other genes that ma be involved in the same pathways
you can do s mutant screen for other mutants with defects for the commissure and find these genes which ay also be involved - can cone them and test if in the same pathway
what is the name of a screen that looks for mutations with phenotypes on a background?
an enhancer screen
what can enhancer screens be used for?
finding components of a pathway
why are fish good for enhancer screens?
cause when you use an enhancer screen you want a homo for the background and a homo for the new mutation - this is 1/4 x 1/4= 1/16 of the offspring - you would have to do this with several breedings with mice etc- bt not for fish- or for dros because the have large clutches
on what background did a WNT signalling component become apparent?
on a TCF3a on a background
how do you carry out genetic mapping?
- classical genetic mapping/ positional cloning: the basic idea is that you try to map which chromosome and on which chromosme the mutation is on- it assess how close the mutation is to a DNA marker that you know the position of- ou can use brittle and red eye and if these are close togetherr then you will normally get parental phenotypes and very rarely would you get recombination. But if they were on separate chromosomes then you get recombination . you can then work out the recomb rate and work out how far different markers are from each other
- now ou can sequence the genomes and look for regions of the genome where all the markers are homozygous- no recombination between matrnral and patternal- homozygous mapping
what are SSLPs?
- (simple sequence length polymorphisms) little stretches of repetitive DNA that can vary quite a lot- can PCR p this bit of sequence and you will see variation
what are CA repeats
organaisms have different lengths of CA repeats in their DNA
how can you use genetic markers for mapping?
- you first sequence sing PCR different areas in the genome of your two parents, then you can look in the offspring how much variation there is between these areas- has there been recombination or not
what is homozygosity mapping?
- sequencing the genomes of F2s that all express the mutation
- then looking for areas of the genome with high homozygosity- that is areas where there has been no recombination between maternal and paternal chromosome tat is common across all of the F2s.
- this gives you an idea hat the alley lies in this region then you can find candidate genes within this region and then you can use RNAi or Mo etc depending on the organism- maybe even crispr- to see if this mimics the phenotype
once you have a lift of candidate genes, how do you go about decided on your candidate?
- where is our gene expressed, is it where we would think it was
- can test a large number of mutants and see if in all of these this allele is present
- want to phenocopy the mutant- antisense or you could generate a new allele in the same gene and ask if it produces the same phenotype
- sequence the gene and look for mutation - is it a missense- change in protein structure, or is it a stop codon
- if we put back a wild type version of the gene, does it rescue it?
how can/ you knock out a gene function
- create an antisense oligonucleotide targeted against the AUG are of a given gene- morphosinos block translation and can block splicing
- you can do a ubiquitous specific knock down by injected into the entire embryo earl in development or a mosaic knock down by precise injection of antisense
how can you do a gain of function technique with zebrafish?
you can inject RNA or DNA ubiqitously and in a mosiac pattern
what is a high throughput` laborious method of reverse genetics in zebrafish?
you mutinies a male fish and create a collection of thousands of fish carrying different mutations- you then calculate that within this pool of fish you have a mutation for every gene in this pool of fish- have to do 5-1000 fish, then you PCR around your gene of interest for very fish and identify which of the sperm samples has a mutation in your gene of interest and use in vitro fert to generate a line of fish
what are the three main reverse genetics tools?
zinc-fingers, TALENs and CRISPr.
what is a method of looking at the actions of mutant cells in an organism?
take labelled coloured mutant cells from one and inject into another coloured labeled embryo
why would you want o insert a host that was one colour with the cells from a donor of a different coloured organism?
morphology of individual cells, what do mutant cells do when they are surrounded by wild type cells, what do cancer cells do , during embryology which cells of the transplant contribute to what
how can fish be used in drugs?
fish is smaller enough to be put into a 96 well plate- can do drug screening on entire embryo- screen for interesting phenotype- drugs that inhibit melanoma.
why is doing drug screens on fish good?
- development
- timing of action
- dose control
- epistasis-like experiments with mutants • disrupt all copies of given gene or family
ow can you use transgenics in fish?
- you can take the enhancer from a gene that is in specific cell-type- hook this up to a report gene, inject into the fish and it will be incorporated and will be incorporated into the fish
- this can be used to look at the movement of different cell types to an wound site because the little fish is see through and you can clip a fin and watch the cells of different transgenic fish which express labelled different immune cells
what can single cel electroporation allow you to do?
expression of DNA in indiividua cells in the intact brain- label one cell with reporter gene construct