Name: using flow cytometry to detect and quantitate altered blood formation in the developing zebrafish
Uploaded: 2021-04-29T14:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Using Flow Cytometry to Detect and Quantitate Altered Blood Formation in the Developing Zebrafish at JoVE.com

Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH: R15 DK114732-01 to D.L.S.), the National Science Foundation (NSF: MRI 1626406 to D.L.S.), and from the Honor&#39;s Program at California State University Chico (to K.F.R.). The authors thank Betsey Tamietti for laboratory management and Kathy Johns for administrative assistance.

The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) advisory board at California State University, Chico, approved all methods described below.
NOTE: It is advised to treat embryos with 1-phenyl 2-thiourea (PTU; Table 1) at 24 hours postfertilization (hpf) to prevent pigmentation which negatively affects fluorescence discrimination by flow cytometry. All procedures listed below are acceptable for flow cytometry and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). However, if on...

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Zebrafish are an excellent model system for studying primitive and definitive vertebrate hematopoiesis. Over the past few decades, multiple assays have been developed and refined, allowing zebrafish to become a quick and economical model for testing drugs, generating and testing genetic mutants, and overall allowing researchers to analyze molecular pathways essential for hematopoiesis. This protocol utilizes embryonic zebrafish which allows quick data collection, the use of less physical space than adult animals, and the...

Blood production (hematopoiesis) is an essential developmental process that first starts in the early embryo. This process begins by generating primitive red blood cells and macrophages directly from mesoderm, and later shifts towards the production of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). These stem cells, which are multipotent, generate all of the varieties of mature blood cells in the organism. Capable of self-renewal, the system is continually replenished through these HSPCs. While this process starts early in development, hematopoiesis continues for the life of the animal, providing the ability to transport oxygen to distant sites of the body, to stop bleeding after injury, and to protect the body from infection. The development of this complex system is controlled temporally and spatially during development and any perturbations in blood cell production can be catastrophic for the organism, resulting in anemia, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, and leukemia.
A popular animal model used for hematopoietic research is the zebrafish (Danio rerio) because they have similar blood development when compared to humans. In fact, many of the genes and molecular pathways used during hematopoiesis are conserved throughout vertebrate evolution, allowing us to learn about human genes by studying zebrafish. Importantly, zebrafish embryos develop outside the body and within 7 days have generated most mature blood cell types, allowing for direct visualization of the hematopoietic system in a short amount of time. Zebrafish are also extremely fecund, which allows researchers to observe a larger number of samples in a short time frame, which is also important for generating reproducible data. The zebrafish&#39;s short generation time and external development provides for easier manipulation and observation during mutagenesis studies1,2,3,4,5 and drug screening6,7,8,9,10. This allows a panel of promising therapeutic compounds for human blood disorders to be quickly and efficiently tested.
Importantly, zebrafish are also genetically amenable, and the genome is sequenced and annotated. This tractability allows reverse genetics techniques such as morpholino- (MO-) mediated knockdown and CRISPR-mediated genetic ablation to be performed. Zebrafish have also proven their utility as a model to perform forward genetic screens; many essential genes and pathways involved in vertebrate blood formation have been discovered in this manner. Numerous methods of observing blood cells have also been developed in zebrafish. While traditional histological staining techniques exist, it is also possible to perform in situ hybridization for blood-specific transcripts. Importantly, numerous transgenic lines of fish also exist whereby fluorescent proteins are expressed by lineage-specific promoters, allowing the labelling of specific blood cells with fluorescent proteins11. This allows researchers to perform up-to-the-minute observation of blood cell genesis, expansion, and regulation in a living organism over time.
Overall, conservation of the hematopoietic system, the presence and easy development of transgenic lines, easy visualization, and short generation time has made the zebrafish an economical, fast, and adaptable model of hematopoiesis. To improve upon the toolbox of techniques available for zebrafish researchers, we developed this assay to robustly quantitate the number of blood cells in embryos. The method involves digesting transgenic animals and performing flow cytometry for fluorescent blood cells. In this way, blood cells from mutant animals, the effect of MO and CRISPR modification, and the effect of small molecules can be quantitatively analyzed in a quick and reproducible manner. These assays are user-friendly and economical ways to enumerate blood cells, allowing examination of their generation, proliferation, and maintenance over time.

<table border="1" fo:keep-together.within-page="1" fo:keep-with-next.within-page="always">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>1.5 ml MCF tube</td>
			<td>FisherBrand</td>
			<td>05-408-129</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>10 mm Polystyrene easygrip Petri dish</td>
			<td>Corning Falcon</td>
			<td>351008</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>5 ml Polystyrene round bottom tube with cell strainer cap</td>
			<td>Corning Falcon</td>
			<td>352235</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>BD FACSAria Fusion flow cytometer</td>
			<td>BD Biosciences</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Dithiolthreitol (DTT)</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>646563</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>DPBS (10x) with Ca2+ and Mg2+</td>
			<td>Life Technologies</td>
			<td>14080-055</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>FBS 500 mL</td>
			<td>Gemini Bio-Products</td>
			<td>100-108</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>HyClone PBS (1x)</td>
			<td>GE Healthcare Life Sciences</td>
			<td>sh30256.01</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Librease</td>
			<td>Roche Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>5401119001</td>
			<td>dissociation protease</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Pronase</td>
			<td>Roche Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>11459643001</td>
			<td>dechorionation protease</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>SYTOX Red Dead Cell Stain</td>
			<td>Invitrogen&#160;</td>
			<td>S34859</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

using flow cytometry to detect and quantitate altered blood formation in the developing zebrafish

The diversity of cell lineages that comprise mature blood in vertebrate animals arise from the differentiation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). This is a critical process that occurs throughout the lifespan of organisms, and disruption of the molecular pathways involved during embryogenesis can have catastrophic long-term consequences. For a multitude of reasons, zebrafish (Danio rerio) has become a model organism to study hematopoiesis. Zebrafish embryos develop externally, and by 7 days postfertilization (dpf) have produced most of the subtypes of definitive blood cells that will persist for their lifetime. Assays to assess the number of hematopoietic cells have been developed, mainly utilizing specific histological stains, in situ hybridization techniques, and microscopy of transgenic animals that utilize blood cell-specific promoters driving the expression of fluorescent proteins. However, most staining assays and in situ hybridization techniques do not accurately quantitate the number of blood cells present; only large differences in cell numbers are easily visualized. Utilizing transgenic animals and analyzing individuals with fluorescent or confocal microscopy can be performed, but the quantitation of these assays relies on either counting manually or utilizing expensive imaging software, both of which can make errors. Development of additional methods to assess blood cell numbers would be economical, faster, and could even be automated to quickly assess the effect of CRISPR-mediated genetic modification, morpholino-mediated transcript reduction, and the effect of drug compounds that affect hematopoiesis on a large scale. This novel assay to quantitate blood cells is performed by dissociating whole zebrafish embryos and analyzing the amount of fluorescently labelled blood cells present. These assays should allow elucidation of molecular pathways responsible for blood cell generation, expansion, and regulation during embryogenesis, which will allow researchers to further discover novel factors altered during blood diseases, as well as pathways essential during the evolution of vertebrate hematopoiesis.

To enumerate red blood cells in embryonic zebrafish, lcr:GFP16 embryos were injected at the one-cell-stage with PBS, 7.0 ng/nL ism1 MO, or 7.0 ng/nL ism1 MO with 7.0 ng ism1 mRNA12. At 48 hpf they were digested and subjected to flow cytometry analysis. After analyzing the percentage of GFP+ red blood cells from each sample (each sample is 5 randomly selected embryos; Figure ...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Using Flow Cytometry to Detect and Quantitate Altered Blood Formation in the Developing Zebrafish at JoVE.com

Using Flow Cytometry to Detect and Quantitate Altered Blood Formation in the Developing Zebrafish

This assay is a simple method to quantitate hematopoietic cells in developing embryonic zebrafish. Blood cells from dissociated zebrafish are subjected to flow cytometry analysis. This allows the detection of blood defects in mutant animals and after genetic modification.

The diversity of cell lineages that comprise mature blood in vertebrate animals arise from the differentiation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells ...

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