Re-evaluating functional landscape of the cardiovascular system during development

Abstract

The cardiovascular system facilitates body-wide distribution of oxygen, a vital process for development and survival of virtually all vertebrates. However, zebrafish, a vertebrate model organism, appears to form organs and survive mid-larval periods without the functional cardiovascular system. Despite such dispensability, it is the first organ to develop. Such enigma prompted us to hypothesize yet other cardiovascular functions that are important for developmental and/or physiological processes. Hence, systematic cellular ablations and functional perturbations are performed on zebrafish cardiovascular system to gain comprehensive and body-wide understanding of such functions and to elucidate underlying mechanisms. This approach identifies a set of organ-specific genes, each implicated for important functions. The study also unveils distinct cardiovascular mechanisms, each differentially regulating their expressions in organ-specific and oxygen-independent manners. Such mechanisms are mediated by organ-vessel interactions, circulation-dependent signals, and circulation-independent beating-heart-derived signals. Hence, a comprehensive and body-wide functional landscape of the cardiovascular system reported herein may provide a clue as to why it is the first organ to develop. Furthermore, the dataset herein could serve as a resource for the study of organ development and function.SUMMARY STATEMENTThe body-wide landscape of the cardiovascular functions during development is reported. Such landscape may provide a clue as to why the cardiovascular system is the first organ to develop.

Potential Molecular Mechanisms and Drugs for Aconitine-Induced Cardiotoxicity in Zebrafish through RNA Sequencing and Bioinformatics Analysis

“…The similar genome between humans and zebrafish is up to 87%, therefore it can be applied to investigate the molecular mechanism of human diseases or highthroughput drug screening [16]. Thirdly, cardiac fluorescence transgenic (cmlc2: GFP) zebrafish emit green under a fluorescence microscope, which makes it accurate and convenient to observe its heart structure changes [17]. Taken together, zebrafish have certain benefits for studying the effect of drugs on cardiovascular disease.…”