Invited articleMolecular genetics of pituitary development in zebrafish
Section snippets
The zebrafish as a powerful system for genetics, functional genomics, and in vivo imaging
Why study pituitary development in the tropical fresh water fish and aquarium pet Danio rerio, commonly called zebrafish, while a lot is already known about the molecular and genetic control of pituitary formation in the prime mammalian model system, the mouse [1], [2]?
First, there is an evolutionary aspect. Although a recent report describes a potential functional equivalent in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster [3], it is commonly believed that the pituitary gland as a central component of
The hypothalamo-hypophyseal system
Similar to its position in mammals, the pituitary gland or hypophysis of adult zebrafish is located in a bony hollow beneath the hypothalamus, just posterior to the optic chiasm (Fig. 1E and F). At larval stages, it is positioned directly above the fenestra of the neurocranial cartilage, separated from the underlying oral cavity epithelium by a layer of collagen fibrils (Fig. 1C) [13]. As a central part of the HHS, the pituitary links the nervous and the endocrine systems to regulate an array
Development of the zebrafish adenohypophysis
From the developmental biologist's point of view, the AH constitutes an extremely useful model to study the principles of organogenesis and differential cell specification, since it consists of a well defined and spatially arranged set of different cell types that develop from a common pool of precursor cells. In all vertebrates, such AH precursor cells can be traced back to early neural plate stages when neural and presumptive epidermal ectoderm are separated by the pre-placodal ectoderm (PPE)
The zebrafish pituitary mutants & morphants
Reverse genetics and transgenesis-based overexpression studies have provided crucial insights into the molecular network regulating pituitary development in the mouse. Obtained data have led to a model according to which paracrine factors secreted from the ventral diencephalon – namely Wnt5a, the bone morphogenetic protein Bmp4, and the fibroblast growth factors Fgf8 and Fgf10 – induce a domain within the stomodeal ectoderm to form the AH primordium. After the primordium has progressed into
Conclusions and perspectives
Altogether, 12 genes essential for various steps of zebrafish AH development have been identified thus far, six of which encode components of the hedgehog signaling pathway (see Table 1). Clearly, this is only a small fraction of the entire genetic control system, and many questions remain open. The conducted genetic screens have been far from saturation, as underlined by the observation that more and more AH phenotypes are obtained by morpholino knock-downs, while the corresponding mutants are
Acknowledgements
We thank Heinz Schwarz and Agustin Zapata for the photos shown in Fig. 1C and D, respectively, and Marc Muller for communicating unpublished results. HMP and MH were supported by the Max-Planck Society and by SFB 592 of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
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2020, General and Comparative EndocrinologyCitation Excerpt :Thus, in contrast with the general view that the pituitary cell types are spread evenly throughout the mammalian adult pituitary, it is evident that at least gonadotropes may cluster after puberty, which could permit coordinated hormone release. Unlike the adult mammalian adenohypophyis, in the teleost the different endocrine cell types are clustered in different areas (Pogoda and Hammerschmidt, 2007; Musumeci et al., 2015). The spatial arrangement of the different cell types is more or less complete during the larval stage, and remains in place for the entire lifespan of the fish.