Establishment of a zebrafish inbred strain, M-AB, capable of regular breeding and genetic manipulation

Abstract

Inbred strains of organisms are genetically highly uniform and thus useful for life science research. We have previously reported the ongoing generation of the zebrafish IM strain from the India (IND) strain through full sib-pair mating for 16 generations. However, the IM fish laid a small number of offspring and had a short lifespan, implying the need for discreet care in breeding. Here, we report the subsequent establishment of IM strain as well as the generation of a new inbred zebrafish strain, Mishima-AB (M-AB). M-AB was derived from the *AB strain by full sib-pair mating for over 20 generations, which fulfills the general criterion for the establishment of an inbred strain. In contrast to the IM case, maintenance of the M-AB strain by sib-pair mating required almost no special handling. Genome sequencing of IM individuals from the 47th generation and M-AB individuals from the 27th generation revealed that SNP-based genomic heterogeneity across whole-genome nucleotides was 0.008% and 0.011%, respectively. These percentages were much lower than those of the parental IND (0.197%) and *AB (0.086%) strains. These results indicate that the genomes of these inbred strains were highly homogenous. We also demonstrated the successful microinjection of antisense morpholinos, CRISPR/Cas9, and foreign genes into M-AB embryos at the 1-cell stage. Overall, we report the establishment of a zebrafish inbred strain, M-AB, which is capable of regular breeding and genetic manipulation. This strain will be useful for the analysis of genetically susceptible phenotypes such as behaviors, microbiome features and drug susceptibility.