Notochord Injury Assays that Stimulate Transcriptional Responses in Zebrafish Larvae

Abstract

Zebrafish have become an increasingly important model organism in the field of wound healing and regenerative medicine, due to their high regenerative capacity coupled with high-resolution imaging in living animals. In a recent study, we described multiple physical and chemical methods to induce notochord injury that led to highly specific transcriptional responses in notochord cellular subpopulations. The notochord is a critical embryonic structure that functions to shape and pattern the vertebrae and spinal column. Here, we describe precision needle injury, tail-notochord amputation, and chemical inhibition of caveolin that trigger a wound-specific wt1b expression response in the notochord sheath cell subpopulation. We propose that these procedures can be used to study distinct cell populations that make up the cellular processes of notochord repair.