Gene-specific differential response to anti-apoptotic therapies in zebrafish models of ocular coloboma.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: We recently demonstrated that molecular therapy using aminoglycosides can overcome the underlying genetic defect in two zebrafish models of ocular coloboma and showed abnormal cell death to be a key feature associated with the optic fissure closure defects. In further studies to identify molecular therapies for this common congenital malformation, we now examine the effects of anti-apoptotic compounds in zebrafish models of ocular coloboma in vivo. METHODS: Two ocular coloboma zebrafish lines (pax2.1/noi(tu29a) and lamb1/gup(m189)) were exposed to diferuloylmethane (curcumin) or benzyloxycarbonyl-Val-Ala-Asp(Ome)-fluoromethylketone (zVAD-fmk; a pan-caspase inhibitor) for up to 8 days post-fertilization. The effects of these compounds were assessed by morphology, histology, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining and western blot analysis. RESULTS: The size of the coloboma in gup zebrafish mutants treated with diferuloylmethane was greatly reduced. In treated mutants a reduction in TUNEL staining and a 67% decrease in activated caspase-3 protein were observed. The release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria into the cytosol was reduced fourfold by in vivo diferuloylmethane treatment, suggesting that the drug was acting to inhibit the intrinsic apoptotic pathway. Inhibition of caspases directly with zVAD-fmk also resulted in a similar reduction in coloboma phenotype. Treatment with either diferuloylmethane or zVAD-fmk resulted in a statistically significant 1.4 fold increase in length of survival of these mutant zebrafish (p<0.001), which normally succumb to the lethal genetic mutation. In contrast, the coloboma phenotype in noi zebrafish mutants did not respond to either diferuloylmethane or zVAD-fmk exposure, even though inhibition of apoptotic cell death was observed by a reduction in TUNEL staining. CONCLUSIONS: The differential sensitivity to anti-apoptotic agents in lamb1-deficient and pax2.1-deficient zebrafish models, suggests that apoptotic cell death is not a final common pathway in all ocular coloboma genotypes. When considering anti-cell death therapies for ocular colobomatous defects attention should be paid to the genotype under investigation.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".