PUBLICATION
Vestibular deficits do not underlie looping behavior in achiasmatic fish
- Authors
- Huang, Y.Y., Tschopp, M., Straumann, D., and Neuhauss, S.C.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-100830-6
- Date
- 2010
- Source
- Communicative & integrative biology 3(4): 379-381 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Huang, Melody Ying-Yu, Neuhauss, Stephan, Tschopp, Markus
- Keywords
- looping, achiasmatic, infantile nystagmus syndrome, vestibular ocular reflex, optokinetic response, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
- none
- PubMed
- 20798832 Full text @ Commun. Integr. Biol.
Citation
Huang, Y.Y., Tschopp, M., Straumann, D., and Neuhauss, S.C. (2010) Vestibular deficits do not underlie looping behavior in achiasmatic fish. Communicative & integrative biology. 3(4):379-381.
Abstract
Zebrafish belladonna (bel) mutants carry a mutation in the lhx2 gene that encodes a Lim domain homeobox transcription factor, leading to a defect in the retinotectal axon pathfinding. As a result, a large fraction of homozygous bel mutants is achiasmatic. Achiasmatic bel mutants display ocular motor instabilities, both reserved optokinetic response (OKR) and spontaneous eye oscillations, and an unstable swimming behavior, described as looping. All these unstable behaviors have been linked to the underlying optic nerve projection defect. Looping has been investigated under different visual stimuli and shown to be vision dependent and contrast sensitive. In addition, looping correlates perfectly with reversed OKR and the spontaneous oscillations of the eyes. Hence, it has been hypothesized that looping is a compensatory response to the perception of self-motion induced by the spontaneous eye oscillations. However, both ocular and postural instabilities could also be caused by a yet unidentified vestibular deficit. Here, we performed a preliminary test of the vestibular function in achiasmatic bel larval mutants in order to clarify the potential role of a vestibular deficit in looping. We found that the vestibular ocular reflex (VOR) is normally directed in both bel mutants and wild types and therefore exclude the possibility that nystagmus and looping in reverse to the rotating optokinetic drum can be attributed to an underlying vestibular deficit.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping