Fig. 7

Fig. 7 Embryonic exposure to AFB1 disrupts yolk lipid metabolism in zebrafish larvae. (A) Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of lipid metabolism and transport-associated genes in 120 hpf zebrafish larvae exposed to 0.1 mg/L AFB1. The selected lipid-associated genes were identified in the zebrafish yolk by Fraher et al. (2016). FDR: false discovery rate; NES: normalized enrichment score. (B) Heat map illustrating the expression level of 19 lipid-associated genes identified by GSEA between the control and the AFB1-exposed larvae. Data represent the normalized gene expression values of the four independent biological replicates per treatment. Red asterisks indicate the selected genes for RT-qPCR. (C) RT-qPCR-based analysis of four selected yolk lipid metabolism and transport-related genes after embryonic exposure to different sub-lethal concentrations of AFB1 (n = 5 replicates, n = 30 pooled larvae per replicate) (D) Representative images of Oil Red O (ORO) stained 120 hpf larvae after AFB1 exposure. ORO staining indicates the lipid content and distribution in the larvae. Scale bar = 500 µm. (E) Lipid content was evaluated by optical density (OD) measurement. The graph showing OD values of the abdominal region relative to the control (100%) after AFB1 exposure (n = 2 replicates, n = 10 larvae per replicate). Data represent the mean and SD. “*” indicates statistical significance at p < 0.05 vs. the control (DMSO).