Abstract
Teleost fish skin serves as the first line of defense against pathogens. The interaction between pathogen and host skin determines the infection outcome. However, the mechanism(s) that modulate infection remain largely unknown. A proper tissue culture model that is easier to handle but can quantitatively and qualitatively monitor infection progress may shed some lights. Here, we use striped catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) to establish an ex vivo skin explant tissue culture model to explore host pathogen interactions. The skin explant model resembles in vivo skin in tissue morphology, integrity, and immune functionality. Inoculation of aquatic pathogen Aeromonas hydrophila in this model induces epidermal exfoliation along with epithelial cell dissociation and inflammation. We conclude that this ex vivo skin explant model could serve as a teleost skin infection model for monitoring pathogenesis under various infection conditions. The model can also potentially be translated into a platform to study prevention and treatment of aquatic infection on the skin in aquaculture applications.
Highlights
Teleost fish skin serves as the first line of defense against pathogens
Skin was removed and trimmed from the striped catfish and used as fresh skin, media-cultured, or media-cultured by separating external- and internal-facing region as the skin model (Fig. 1A), using a specially fabricated device as described in (Fig. 1B). This system is analogous to a traditional transwell system except that the fish skin doubles as the transwell membrane
The skin model and fresh skin of the ventral region showed a bottom layer of basal epithelial cells (BC) and superficial epithelial cells (SC) with club cells (CC) in between, whereas cultured skin only expressed a thin layer of basal epithelial cells
Summary
Teleost fish skin serves as the first line of defense against pathogens. The interaction between pathogen and host skin determines the infection outcome. We use striped catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) to establish an ex vivo skin explant tissue culture model to explore host pathogen interactions. Inoculation of aquatic pathogen Aeromonas hydrophila in this model induces epidermal exfoliation along with epithelial cell dissociation and inflammation We conclude that this ex vivo skin explant model could serve as a teleost skin infection model for monitoring pathogenesis under various infection conditions. Primary and cell line-based epithelial or immune cells were considered alternative models for studying fish skin infection because of their simple, stable, and easy-to-handle properties. The primary fish gill system has been studied and established for aquatic environmental monitoring[17] In both cell line and primary cell culture, gene expression and protein function may significantly differ from in vivo models due to the lack of multiple cell type signaling. Developing an ex vivo skin model system comparable to the models above can potentially mimic fish mucosal skin and serve as an alternative model for infection research
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