Transcriptional profiling reveals barcode-like toxicogenomic responses in the zebrafish embryo

Lixin Yang¹ , Jules R Kemadjou¹ , Christian Zinsmeister¹ , Matthias Bauer¹ , Jessica Legradi¹ , Ferenc Müller¹ , Michael Pankratz¹ , Jens Jäkel²^,3 and Uwe Strähle¹

¹Institute of Toxicology and Genetics, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany

²Institute for Applied Computer Science, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Postfach 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany

³Institute for Measurement and Control Engineering, HTWK Leipzig, Postfach 30 11 66, 04251 Leipzig, Germany

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2007, 8:R227doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-10-r227


Published:	25 October 2007

Subject areas: Genome studies, Model organisms, Molecular biology

Abstract

Background

Early life stages are generally most sensitive to toxic effects. Our knowledge on the action of manmade chemicals on the developing vertebrate embryo is, however, rather limited. We addressed the toxicogenomic response of the zebrafish embryo in a systematic manner by asking whether distinct chemicals would induce specific transcriptional profiles.

Results

We exposed zebrafish embryos to a range of environmental toxicants and measured the changes in gene-expression profiles by hybridizing cDNA to an oligonucleotide microarray. Several hundred genes responded significantly to at least one of the 11 toxicants tested. We obtained specific expression profiles for each of the chemicals and could predict the identity of the toxicant from the expression profiles with high probability. Changes in gene expression were observed at toxicant concentrations that did not cause morphological effects. The toxicogenomic profiles were highly stage specific and we detected tissue-specific gene responses, underscoring the sensitivity of the assay system.

Conclusion

Our results show that the genome of the zebrafish embryo responds to toxicant exposure in a highly sensitive and specific manner. Our work provides proof-of-principle for the use of the zebrafish embryo as a toxicogenomic model and highlights its potential for systematic, large-scale analysis of the effects of chemicals on the developing vertebrate embryo.