title: Ultrastructural Mapping of the Zebrafish Gastrointestinal System as a Basis for Experimental Drug Studies.
abstract: Research in the field of gastroenterology is increasingly focused on the use of alternative nonrodent model organisms to provide new experimental tools to study chronic diseases. The zebrafish is a particularly valuable experimental platform to explore organ and cell structure-function relationships under relevant biological and pathobiological settings. This is due to its optical transparency and its close-to-human genetic makeup. To-date, the structure-function properties of the GIS of the zebrafish are relatively unexplored and limited to histology and fluorescent microscopy. Occasionally those studies include EM of a given subcellular process but lack the required full histological picture. In this work, we employed a novel combined biomolecular imaging approach in order to cross-correlate 3D ultrastructure over different length scales (optical-, X-ray micro-CT, and high-resolution EM). Our correlated imaging studies and subsequent data modelling provide to our knowledge the first detailed 3D picture of the zebrafish larvae GIS. Our results provide unequivocally a limit of confidence for studying various digestive disorders and drug delivery pathways in the zebrafish.
authors.affiliation: School of Medical Sciences (Discipline of Anatomy and Histology), The Bosch Institute, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Delfine
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8575-0534
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: School of Medical Sciences (Discipline of Anatomy and Histology), The Bosch Institute, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Gerald J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Shami
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Morsch
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Roger S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.affiliation: School of Medical Sciences (Discipline of Anatomy and Histology), The Bosch Institute, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; Australian Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis (ACMM), The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Filip
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Braet
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical; D041981:Gastrointestinal Tract / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007814:Larva / Q000648:ultrastructure; D051381:Rats; D015027:Zebrafish