Analysis of In Vivo Cell Migration in Mosaic Zebrafish Embryos

Arthur Boutillon (1) , Florence Giger (2) , Nicolas David (1)

1 LOB - Laboratoire d'Optique et Biosciences
2 MRC Center for Developmental Neurobiology [London]

Being optically clear, the zebrafish embryo is a nice model system to analyse cell migration in vivo. This chapter describes a combination of injection and cell transplant procedures that allows creation of mosaic embryos, containing a few cells labelled differently from their neighbours. Rapid 5D confocal imaging of these embryos permits to simultaneously track and quantify the movement of large cell groups, as well as analyse the cellular or subcellular dynamics of transplanted cells during their migration. In addition, expression of a candidate gene can be modified in transplanted cells. Comparing behaviour of these cells to control or neighbouring cells allows determination of the role of the candidate gene in cell migration. We describe the procedure, focusing on one specific cell population during gastrulation, but it can easily be adapted to other cell populations and migrating events during early embryogenesis.

Domaines: Biologie du développement

Arthur Boutillon, Florence Giger, Nicolas David. Analysis of In Vivo Cell Migration in Mosaic Zebrafish Embryos. Cell Migration Methods and Protocols, pp.213-226, 2018, ⟨10.1007/978-1-4939-7701-7_16⟩. ⟨hal-02325001⟩