Method for disarranging the pigment pattern of zebrafish by optogenetics

Abstract

To investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of skin pattern formation, we developed a simple method for artificially disarranging the placement of all three pigment cell types in the body trunk of zebrafish (Danio rerio). We generated transgenic fish with melanophores that ectopically expressed a variant of channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2). Blue light (BL) irradiation induced melanophore depolarization and random migration; the latter resulted in the disarrangement of the two other pigment cell types (xanthophores and iridophores). This BL disarrangement (BLD) method was effective in both young and adult fish, but it did not affect the initial placement of pigment cells in juvenile fish (approximately 5 weeks post-fertilization). Irradiation with BL was not harmful to cells, and the patterning process immediately resumed when BL was switched off. Using the BLD method, we demonstrated that interactions between pigment cells determined stripe width in the absence of any pre-set positional cues, while the initial horizontal alignment of iridophores determined their directionality. The BLD method can be adapted to any zebrafish skin-pattern mutant, providing a novel tool for analyzing pattern formation mechanisms under a variety of conditions and facilitating further study in this field.

Keywords: Optogenetics; Pattern formation; Pigment cell.