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A genetic model for development, physiology and behavior of zebrafish larvae devoid of catecholamines

Paredes-Zuniga, S.; Peters, R.; Ostevold, K.; Arrey, G.; Frank, D.; Oswald, J.; Veit, F.; Schredelseker, T.; Holzschuh, J.; Driever, W.

2025-07-22 developmental biology
10.1101/2025.07.22.666142 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Dopamine and noradrenaline have conserved roles in control of physiology and behaviors of vertebrates. However, vertebrate genetic systems completely devoid of catecholamines are not available. We have generated a genetic zebrafish model completely devoid of catecholamines by combining mutations in all three genes involved in L-DOPA synthesis: the tyrosine hydroxylase genes th and th2, and tyrosinase tyr. We found catecholamine-deficient zebrafish larvae to be viable and to develop an anatomically normal nervous system including catecholaminergic neuron somata and projections, albeit with reduced cell numbers detected in some clusters. In contrast, selected physiological functions that depend on catecholamines are impaired, including hatching and heart rate regulation upon temperature challenges. Spontaneous locomotion and optomotor behaviors are also impaired. Despite the changes observed, it is surprising that larvae develop a largely normal behavioral repertoire. Our model will be useful to investigate how physiology and neural circuit function are regulated in catecholamine deficient larvae.

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"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.