Huntingtin confers fitness but is not embryonically essential in zebrafish development.

Huntingtin confers fitness but is not embryonically essential in zebrafish development. Dev Biol. 2019 Nov 01;: Authors: Sidik H, Ang CJ, Pouladi MA Abstract Attempts to constitutively knockout HTT in rodents resulted in embryonic lethality, curtailing efforts to study HTT function later in development. Here we show that HTT is dispensable for early zebrafish development, contrasting published zebrafish morpholino experiment results. Homozygous HTT knockouts were embryonically viable and appeared developmentally normal through juvenile stages. Comparison of adult fish revealed significant reduction in body size and fitness in knockouts compared to hemizygotes and wildtype fish, indicating an important role for wildtype HTT in postnatal development. Our zebrafish model provides an opportunity to understand the function of wildtype HTT later in development. PMID: 31682806 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Developmental Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Tags: Dev Biol Source Type: research
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