Biology subjects

Dotto Fontana, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Dotto Fontana, B..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Transgenerational Effects of Early-Life Stress on Anxiety in Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Early-life adversity impacts on anxiety-related behaviors in adulthood. The effects of such adversity not only affects the animal itself, but can be passed on transgenerationally. Pervasive effects of experimentally-induced early-life stress (ELS) have been documented in adult zebrafish but it is not clear if this can be passed on via the germline. Here, we investigated the effects of ELS across three generations, by analyzing the responses of adult animals exposed to ELS in two different anxiety-related tasks, as well as in social behavior, memory, and cognition. Animals exposed to ELS (at 7 days-post-fertilization) showed a marked attenuation of specific anxiety-related behaviors (F0) when adults, and these alterations were maintained across two subsequent generations (F1 and F2). These findings suggest that zebrafish may be a useful model organism to study the transgenerational effects of ELS, and how this pertains to (for example) neuropsychiatric disorders. In addition, our data may naturally provoke questions regarding consideration of the environment of laboratory-housed zebrafish at early developmental stages. In particular, more work may be necessary to determine how different environmental stressors could affect data variability across laboratories. Graphical Abstract O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=59 SRC="FIGDIR/small/517541v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (15K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@c1aac0org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@b14684org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@8c878aorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@16a68b_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG Summary of the ELS effects in zebrafish anxiety-like behavior across multiple generations. C_FIG

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

A high-throughput test of anxiety for zebrafish (Danio rerio) larvae: the larval diving response (LDR)

BackgroundZebrafish are used in anxiety research as the species naturalistic diving response to a new environment is a reliable and validated marker for anxiety-like behavior. One of the benefits of using zebrafish is the potential for high throughput drug screens in fish at the larval stage. However, at present, tests of anxiety in larvae and adults often measure different endpoints. New MethodHere, for the first time, we have adapted the novel tank diving response test for examining diving behavior in zebrafish larvae to assess anxiety-like behaviors at very early-stages (7 days-post-fertilization [dpf]). Comparison with Existing MethodsCurrent methods to examine anxiety in larvae can show low reliability, and measure different endpoints as in adults, thus calling into question their translational relevance. ResultsWe found that 7dpf zebrafish spent more time at the bottom of a small novel tank. We validated this as anxiety-like behaviors with diazepam reducing, and caffeine increasing the time spent in the bottom of the novel environment. ConclusionsThis new automated and high-throughput screening tool has the potential use for screening of anxiogenic and anxiolytic compounds, and for studies aiming to understand the mechanisms underlying affective disorders.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2020

Moderate early-life stress improves adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) spatial short-term memory but does not affect social and anxiety-like responses

Early-life stress (ELS) is defined as a short or chronic period of trauma, environmental or social deprivation, which can affect different neurochemical and behavioral patterns during adulthood. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) have been widely used as a model system to understand human neurodevelopmental disorders and display translationally relevant behavioral and stress-regulating systems. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of moderate ELS by exposing young animals (six weeks post-fertilization), for three consecutive days, to three stressors, and analyzing the impact of this on adult zebrafish behavior (sixteen weeks post-fertilization). The ELS impact in adults was assessed though analysis of performance on tests of unconditioned memory (free movement pattern Y-maze test), exploratory and anxiety-related task (novel tank diving test) and social cohesion (shoaling test). Here, we show for the first time that moderate ELS increases the number of pure alternations compared to pure repetitions in the unconditioned Y-maze task, suggesting increased spatial short-term memory, but has no effect on shoal cohesion, locomotor profile or anxiety-like behavior. Overall, our data suggest that moderate ELS may be linked to adaptive flexibility which contributes to build resilience in adult zebrafish by improving short-term spatial memory performance.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2019

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) behavioral laterality predicts increased short-term avoidance memory but not stress-reactivity responses

Once considered a uniquely human attribute, behavioral laterality has proven to be ubiquitous among non{square}human animals, being frequently associated with different neurophenotypes in rodents and fish species. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a versatile and complementary vertebrate model system that has been widely used in translational neuropsychiatric research due their highly conserved genetic homology, well characterized physiological and extensive behavioral repertoire. Although the spontaneous left- and right-bias responses and associated behavioral domains (e.g. stress reactivity, aggression and learning) have previously been observed in other teleost species, no information regarding the natural left-right bias responses of zebrafish has been described. Thus, we aimed to investigate the existence and incidence of natural left-right bias of adult zebrafish in the Y-maze test and explore any relationship of biasedness on the performance of different behavioral domains. This included learning about threat-cues in the fear conditioning test and locomotion and anxiety-related behavior in the novel tank diving test. In conclusion, we showed for the first time that zebrafish exhibit a natural manifestation of behavioral lateralization which can influence aversive learning responses. Although laterality did not change locomotion or anxiety-related behaviors, we found that biased animals showed a reduction of short-term memory performance in the Y-maze and increase learning associated to fear cues.

animal behavior and cognition↗