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New Biological Frontiers Illuminated by Molecular Sensors and Actuators
Monday Speaker Abstracts
Multidisciplinary Optical Approach to Zebrafish Targeting Cardiovascular Research
Ian Liau
.
National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Relative to other common model animals, the zebrafish (Danio rerio) possesses numerous unique
features such as rapid development, genetic tractability, low cost of maintenance and optical
transparency at the larval stage. The underlying function and gene of its cardiovascular system is
similar to that of human beings, further making it particularly attractive for fundamental study or
for drug screen targeting cardiovascular diseases. Toward this end, we have developed
multidisciplinary optical approaches to assess the cardiovascular function of zebrafish. With
pseudodynamic 3D imaging, we determined precisely the cardiac function of zebrafish. We show
that the conventional 2D approach tends to overestimate the cardiac parameters and to produce
results of greater variation. As demonstration, we characterized zebrafish subject to
pharmacological interventions of varied cardiac activities and evaluated a zebrafish model of
cardiomyopathy. We found that the cardiac function of zebrafish exhibits pharmacological
responses similar to human beings. With image-guided Raman micro-spectroscopy, we
interrogated the pharmacological response of hypercholesterolemia zebrafish subject to two
commonly prescribed anti-hyperlipidemic drugs (ezetimibe and atorvastatin) in situ and in vivo.
While the treatment of either drug alone decreased the vascular deposition of lipids, only
atorvastatin exerted a profound anti-oxidative effect on vascular fatty lesions. Beyond its
efficacies in suppressing both the accumulation and oxidation of vascular lipids, atorvastatin
expedited the clearance of vascular lipids. The pleotropic therapeutic effect of atorvastatin
observed on zebrafish is notably consistent with the known pharmaceutical effects of this drug
on human beings. In view of the growing interest of using zebrafish in both fundamental and
applied cardiovascular research, we envisage that multidisciplinary optical approach should
benefit fields ranging from investigation of the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases to a
pharmaceutical evaluation of cardiac activity and toxicity.
Imaging Subcellular Voltage Dynamics in Vivo with Improved Genetically Encoded
Indicators
Francois St-Pierre
, Helen H. Yang, Xiaozhe Ding, Ying Yang, Thomas R. Clandinin, Michael
Z. Lin.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
See Abstract: Pos-41 Board 41