Fig. 1

Wild-type and puma mutant adult zebrafish. (A) Wild-type fish develop a series of alternating light and dark horizontal stripes. Dark stripes include melanophores, iridophores, and occasional xanthophores (Parichy and Turner, 2003b). Light stripes include xanthophores, iridophores, and occasional melanophores. Primary adult melanophores stripes develop during pigment pattern metamorphosis immediately dorsal (1D) and ventral (1V) to a lighter interstripe region. During terminal stages of metamorphosis, dorsal melanophores population develop scales (S) and contribute a dark cast to the dorsum of the fish. At the end of pigment pattern metamorphosis, additional secondary adult melanophores stripes start to form, initially ventral to the first ventral primary melanophore stripe (2V1), and then both dorsally (2D) and ventrally (2V2), until on average five stripes are present. (B) In puma mutants, melanophore numbers are severely reduced during early and middle stages of pigment pattern metamorphosis, and adult melanophores typically only appear during stages corresponding to the terminal phase of pigment pattern metamorphosis in wild-type fish. Normal primary stripes do not form, but as new melanophores appear late in development and cover dorsal scales (S), a striped pattern is partially recovered, yielding a pattern of regulatory melanophore stripes (R) that varies in completeness. Scale bar, 2 mm.