Selected Grantee Publications

Whole-Organism 3D Quantitative Characterization of Zebrafish Melanin by Silver Deposition Micro-CT

Katz et al., eLife. 2021.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.11.434673v1

This research team combined micro-computed tomography (CT) with a novel application of ionic silver staining to characterize melanin distribution in whole zebrafish larvae. The resulting images enabled whole-body, computational analyses of regional melanin content and morphology. Normalized micro-CT reconstructions of silver-stained fish consistently reproduced pigment patterns seen by light microscopy and allowed direct quantitative comparisons of melanin content. Silver staining of melanin for micro-CT provides proof-of-principle for whole-body, 3D computational phenomic analysis of a specific cell type at cellular resolution. Advances such as this in whole-organism, high-resolution phenotyping provide superior context for studying the phenotypic effects of genetic, disease, and environmental variables. Supported by ORIP (R24OD018559).