THE SPATIOTEMPORAL STUDY OF ZEBRAFISH INTESTINAL EPITHELIUM RENEWAL

Abstract

In contrast to the stereotypic villus-crypt organization of the bird and mammalian intestine, the zebrafish intestinal epithelium is folded into villar ridges and crypts are absent. This simple organization suggests that, similar to bird and mammalian, intestinal stem cells (ISCs) maintain the villus epithelium along a base-to-tip axis. Because there is no specific marker for zebrafish ISCs yet, we tested whether cells migrate from the base to the tip of the villi ridges by generating mosaic intestine tissues by EMS mutagen, chimera generation, EdU label retention and zebrabow transgenic line generation. The vertical stripes of the newly reproduced cells start their travel toward both flanking intestinal villi by completing their migration to the intestinal villus tip by 48 hours. As the sides of the adjacent intestinal villi flanking an intervillus pocket share the ISCs at the intervillus bottom, the adjacent intestinal villi show the similar expression pattern.