The African turquoise killifish: A research organism to study vertebrate aging and diapause

Abstract

SummaryThe African turquoise killifish has recently gained significant traction as a new research organism in the aging field. Our understanding of aging has strongly benefited from canonical research organisms—yeast, C. elegans, Drosophila, zebrafish, and mice. Many characteristics that are essential to understand aging—for example, the adaptive immune system or the hypothalamo‐pituitary axis—are only present in vertebrates (zebrafish and mice). However, zebrafish and mice live more than 3 years and their relatively long lifespans are not compatible with high‐throughput studies. Therefore, the turquoise killifish, a vertebrate with a naturally compressed lifespan of only 4–6 months, fills an essential gap to understand aging. With a recently developed genomic and genetic toolkit, the turquoise killifish not only provides practical advantages for lifespan and longitudinal experiments, but also allows more systematic characterizations of the interplay between genetics and environment during vertebrate aging. Interestingly, the turquoise killifish can also enter a long‐term dormant state during development called diapause. Killifish embryos in diapause already have some organs and tissues, and they can last in this state for years, exhibiting exceptional resistance to stress and to damages due to the passage of time. Understanding the diapause state could give new insights into strategies to prevent the damage caused by aging and to better preserve organs, tissues, and cells. Thus, the African turquoise killifish brings two interesting aspects to the aging field—a compressed lifespan and a long‐term resistant diapause state, both of which should spark new discoveries in the field.

Cell cycle dynamics during diapause entry and exit in an annual killifish revealed by FUCCI technology

“…Nothobranchius furzeri. This is the shortest-lived vertebrate that can be cultured in captivity and it replicates many typical phenotypes of vertebrate and human aging [2,[16][17][18]. For this reason, it has been used as an experimental model to investigate the effects of several experimental manipulations on aging [10,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…EVL cells maintained red fluorescence for the entire span of subsequent development, possibly indicating arrest in G0 phase, which is coherent with the not proliferating status of these cells.Additionally, their number remained stable around 200 in the portion of the embryo that could be imaged (corresponding roughly to the superior pole)(Figure 4). EVL cells showed a directional movement until the completion of epiboly (Wourms stages[18][19] (Movie as additional file1), when they reached their final position and constituted a syncytium, which was then maintained during the ensuing development. This physical movement and positioning of EVL cells plays an important role during the development of killifish embryos.…”

Celsr1a is essential for tissue homeostasis and onset of aging phenotypes in the zebrafish

“…The killifish Nothobranchius furzeri has become a model to understand the causes of vertebrate 11 aging (Genade et al, 2005;Hu and Brunet, 2018). The utility of this fish model has been due in part to 12 their short lifespan, but they share experimental accessibility of early development thus allowing the 13 study of gene function (Valenzano et al, 2011).…”

Performance of Turquoise killifish, model organism in aging, on commercial pelleted diet: a step towards husbandry standardization

“…A standardized diet is often not available for newly introduced laboratory animals. For example, the short-lived Turquoise killifish Nothobranchus furzeri is a relatively new model organism in biomedicine and evolutionary ecology (Hu & Brunet 2018; Cellerino et al 2016; Genade et al 2005) and no standardized diet is yet available for this species (Polačik et al 2016; Dodzian et al 2018); Nothobranchius spp are reluctant to accept dry food (Polačik et al 2016). The absence of a standardized diet likely impedes wider use of Turquoise killifish as a laboratory model (Reichard & Polačik 2019).…”

“…Nothobranchius furzeri is an important vertebrate model in biomedical and evolutionary studies on aging (Reichard & Polačik 2019; Hu & Brunet 2018; Genade et al 2005). It has an unprecedented fast life history adapted to shallow ephemeral savanna pools in southern Mozambique and Zimbabwe (Reichard & Polačik 2019).…”