The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has been used to investigate pathogenesis of a variety of human diseases. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic, recurrent, inflamatory disease with unclear etiology. IBD is classified into two subtypes: Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). While UC affects the superficial layers of the intestine, CD often affects deeper layers of the bowel wall.
In this study, zebrafish model of IBD was developed using colitic grade (0.04% w/v) Dextron sodium sulfate (DSS) for 3 days. We visualized change of acidified lysosome (neutral red staining) and goblet cells (Alcian blue staining) in intestine of zebrafish larvae. Moreover, expression of known IBD markers such as mucin, pro and anti inflamatory were investigated.
DSS treatment was characterized by upregulation of il-1β, tnfα, hsp70 and il-10 indicating the induction of inflammation. Down regulation of mucin 2.1 in DSS exposed larvae was concomitant with depletion of goblet cell and adherent mucin. Epithelial mucin in goblet cells and acidified lysosome were decreased with DSS (0.04% w/v) treatment. Collectively these results demonstrate that zebrafish IBD model can be applied for understanding the uncovered molecular mechanisms that lead to IBD as well as screening of therapeutic agents to control IBD.