Heart Development, Coronary Vascularization and Ventricular Maturation in a Giant Danio (Devario malabaricus).

Olubusola Shifatu,Paula Evans,Pascal Lafontant,Alan Burns,Wendy Tomamichel,Purva Patel,Sarah Glasshagel-Chilson,Clay Higginbotham,Hannah Nelson,Gregory Lafontant

doi:10.3390/jdb6030019

Olubusola Shifatu, Paula Evans + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/jdb6030019

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Abstract

Giant danios (genus Devario), like zebrafish, are teleosts belonging to the danioninae subfamily of cyprinids. Adult giant danios are used in a variety of investigations aimed at understanding cellular and physiological processes, including heart regeneration. Despite their importance, little is known about development and growth in giant danios, or their cardiac and coronary vessels development. To address this scarcity of knowledge, we performed a systematic study of a giant danio (Devario malabaricus), focusing on its cardiac development, from the segmentation period to ten months post-fertilization. Using light and scanning electron microscopy, we documented that its cardiovascular development and maturation proceed along well defined dynamic and conserved morphogenic patterns. The overall size and cardiovascular expansion of this species was significantly impacted by environmental parameters such as rearing densities. The coronary vasculature began to emerge in the late larval stage. More importantly, we documented two possible loci of initiation of the coronary vasculature in this species, and compared the emergence of the coronaries to that of zebrafish and gourami. This is the first comprehensive study of the cardiac growth in a Devario species, and our findings serve as an important reference for further investigations of cardiac biology using this species.

Highlights

Cardiovascular diseases remain the number one cause of death in the Western world.They encompass adult conditions such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, myocardial infarction, and cardiomyopathies of various etiologies [1]
The findings reported in this manuscript describe the heart development of a Devario species (D. malabaricus), establish the timing of key cardiac morphogenic events, the growth of the species under different environmental conditions, the emergence of its coronary vasculature, and the maturation of its ventricular myocardium
We studied the development and growth of this species from larval, through juvenile and adult stages in over 600 fish, and have documented cardiac development and coronary vascularization

Summary

Introduction

Cardiovascular diseases remain the number one cause of death in the Western world. They encompass adult conditions such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, myocardial infarction, and cardiomyopathies of various etiologies [1]. They include a number of cardiac congenital defects that cause significant pathologies in utero, in neonates and infants, resulting in significant morbidities and increase in health care cost. Studies of mammalian and non-mammalian model organisms such as the mouse [2], amphibians [3], and fish [4], have greatly advanced our understanding of the genes and molecular pathways that regulate cardiovascular development, and the mutations that cause cardiac diseases in human.

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