Zebrafish is a useful model organism in neuroscience; however, its gene expression atlas in the adult brain is not well developed. In the present study, we examined the expression of 38 neuropeptides (agrp, asip2b, avp, calca, cart2a, cart2b, cart3a, cart3b, cart4, cart5, ccka, cckb, crha, crhb, gal, galp, gnrh2, gnrh3, grp, kiss1, kiss2, npb, npvf, npy, hcrt, oxt, pdyn, penka, penkb, pmch, pmchl, pomca, pomcb, tac1, tac3a, tac3b, vipa, and vipb), GABAergic neuron marker gene mix (gad1a, gad1b, and gad2), and glutamatergic neuron marker gene mix (slc17a6a, slc17a6b, slc17a7a, and slc17a7b) in the adult zebrafish brain using in situ hybridization. Three to five adult male fish were sampled per gene. Sampled brains were PFA-fixed and paraffin-embedded, and serial sections of whole brains were prepared. The entire brain of a zebrafish can be placed on a single glass slide. Each glass slide was subjected to in situ hybridization and scanned using a NanoZoomer HT slide scanner (Hamamatsu Photonics). All of the scan data can be viewed and downloaded from the database at this site.
Towako Hiraki-Kajiyama, Nobuhiko Miyasaka, Reiko Ando, Noriko Wakisaka, Hiroya Itoga, Shuichi Onami, Yoshihiro Yoshihara (2024) An atlas and database of neuropeptide gene expression in the adult zebrafish forebrain., The Journal of comparative neurology, Volume 532, Number 6, pp. e25619
Published in 2024 Jun
(Abstract) Zebrafish is a useful model organism in neuroscience; however, its gene expression atlas in the adult brain is not well developed. In the present study, we examined the expression of 38 neuropeptides, comparing with GABAergic and glutamatergic neuron marker genes in the adult zebrafish brain by comprehensive in situ hybridization. The results are summarized as an expression atlas in 19 coronal planes of the forebrain. Furthermore, the scanned data of all brain sections were made publicly available in the Adult Zebrafish Brain Gene Expression Database (https://ssbd.riken.jp/azebex/). Based on these data, we performed detailed comparative neuroanatomical analyses of the hypothalamus and found that several regions previously described as one nucleus in the reference zebrafish brain atlas contain two or more subregions with significantly different neuropeptide/neurotransmitter expression profiles. Subsequently, we compared the expression data in zebrafish telencephalon and hypothalamus obtained in this study with those in mice, by performing a cluster analysis. As a result, several nuclei in zebrafish and mice were clustered in close vicinity. The present expression atlas, database, and anatomical findings will contribute to future neuroscience research using zebrafish.(MeSH Terms)