Development and genetics of red coloration in the zebrafish relative Danio albolineatus
- University of Virginia, United States
- University of Tulsa, United States
- Washington University School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Animal pigment patterns play important roles in behavior and, in many species, red coloration serves as an honest signal of individual quality in mate choice. Among Danio fishes, some species develop erythrophores, pigment cells that contain red ketocarotenoids, whereas other species, like zebrafish (D. rerio) only have yellow xanthophores. Here, we use pearl danio (D. albolineatus) to assess the developmental origin of erythrophores and their mechanisms of differentiation. We show that erythrophores in the fin of D. albolineatus share a common progenitor with xanthophores and maintain plasticity in cell fate even after differentiation. We further identify the predominant ketocarotenoids that confer red coloration to erythrophores and use reverse genetics to pinpoint genes required for the differentiation and maintenance of these cells. Our analyses are a first step towards defining the mechanisms underlying the development of erythrophore-mediated red coloration in Danio and reveal striking parallels with the mechanism of red coloration in birds.
Data availability
Numerical data presented in figure panels are provided in Supplementary File 1. RNA-Seq data has been deposited in GEO and is publicly available, accession #GSE174713)
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Development and genetics of red coloration in the zebrafish relative Danio albolineatusNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE174713.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35 GM122471)
- David M Parichy
University of Tulsa (start-up funds)
- Matthew B Toomey
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC) protocol (#4170) of the University of Virginia. Euthanasia was accomplished by overdose of MS222 followed by physical maceration.
Copyright
© 2021, Huang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Development and genetics of red coloration in the zebrafish relative Danio albolineatus
eLife 10:e70253.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70253
