Long-Term Imaging of Living Adult Zebrafish

Abstract

The zebrafish has become a widely used animal model due in large part to its accessibility to and usefulness for high-resolution optical imaging. Although zebrafish research has historically focused mostly on early development, in recent years the fish has increasingly been used to study regeneration, cancer metastasis, behavior, and other processes taking place in juvenile and adult animals. However, imaging of live adult zebrafish is extremely challenging, with survival of adult fish limited to a few tens of minutes using standard imaging methods developed for zebrafish embryos and larvae. Here, we describe a new method for imaging intubated adult zebrafish using a specially designed 3D printed chamber for long-term imaging of adult zebrafish on inverted microscope systems. We demonstrate the utility of this new system by nearly day-long observation of neutrophil recruitment to a wound area in living double-transgenic adult casper zebrafish with fluorescently labeled neutrophils and lymphatic vessels.