PUBLICATION
Visual development in zebrafish
- Authors
- Easter, Jr., S.S.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-030106-16
- Date
- 1998
- Source
- Proceedings of the EMBO Workshop on Reproduction & Early Development Conference : 52 (Abstract)
- Registered Authors
- Easter, Stephen S., Jr.
- Keywords
- Biological development; Eyes; Fish physiology; Ontogeny
- MeSH Terms
- none
- PubMed
- none
Citation
Easter, Jr., S.S. (1998) Visual development in zebrafish. Proceedings of the EMBO Workshop on Reproduction & Early Development Conference. :52.
Abstract
The presumptive eye first appears, as a wing-like structure extending laterally from the front of the neural tube, at about 14 hours post fertilization (hpf). Over the next 10 hours it assumes its mature form: a hemispheric bilayered structure with a thick neural retina laterally and a thin pigmented epithelium medially, the whole attached to the neural tube by the optic stalk. The morphogenesis involves two previously undescribed features. First, the number of cells in the eye remains essentially constant over 16-24 hpf, even though all the cells can be labeled with bromodeoxyuridine and are therefore proliferative. We have ruled out two possible explanations of this paradox (emigration of cells from the eye and a balanced cell death) and have provided positive support for a third (a prolongation of the retinal cell cycle). Second, most of the cells in the eye end up in the neural retina, although the numbers of cells in the two layers of the presumptive eye are initially the same. Apparently morphogenesis is caused by a massive rearrangement of a fixed number of cells. After 24 hpf, proliferation remains slow in the pigmented epithelium but accelerates in the neural retina where the number of cells increases exponentially at least through 36 hpf with a doubling time of 5 hours.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping