Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting| Lima 2019

Revisiting the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology at the Single-Molecule Level

Poster Abstracts

37-POS Board 37 EFFECT OF NATURAL PLANT EXTRACTS IN THE NEURAL DEVELOMENT OF ZEBRAFISH EMBRYOS Gissela M. Molina 1 ; Edward Málaga-Trillo 1,2 ; 1 Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Lima, Peru 2 Konstanz University, Konstanz, Germany Natural products used by Peruvian traditional medicine are a potential source of active ingredients for the development of new drugs. The present study focused on the evaluation of extract 7158, obtained from a UPCH collection of native plants used in Peruvian traditional medicine. This plant extract has been shown to produce psychoactive effects in behavioral tests carried out in mice. Due to the numerous advantages of the zebrafish as a powerful experimental model in vivo, in the present study we began the analysis of the biological activity of the plant extract 7158 using zebrafish embryos. The analysis included pharmacological tests, and the use of light field and fluorescent microscopy to analyze the neuroanatomical and cellular phenotypes induced by the extract. These tests revealed lethal doses of the whole extract between the concentrations of 2 to 10 μg/ml depending on the genetic background of the embryos used, and various morphological alterations in structures of the nervous system. Using confocal microscopy, we discovered a neuroanatomical phenotype related to axonal development at 1 and 2 dpf, and an early cellular phenotype that was characterized by alterations of the blastomeres size and the nuclear DNA distribution. These experiments demonstrate the applicability of zebrafish embryos to study the cellular basis of neurophysiological effects induced by natural products of relevance to the treatment of mental disorders.

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