The Killifish as a Vertebrate Model for Ageing

Submitted by Robert Saunders on Fri, 09/12/2011 - 05:17

Transposon-Mediated Transgenesis in the Short-Lived African Killifish Nothobranchius furzeri, a Vertebrate Model for Aging [Papers of Interest]

N. furzeriAccording to wikipedia, there are over 1200 species of killifish - these species are distributed through the Americas, southern Europe, Africa and eastern Asia. Nothobranchius furzeri  is an African species with quite diverse colouration patterns (which presumably explains the apparent contradiction between the image here and the species' common name: the Turquoise killifish), and is quite popular as an aquarium fish.  Killifish are particularly short-lived fish, an adaptation to their habitat in transient water bodies.  For the same reason, their eggs are quite resistent to drying out - killiish can be exchanged between labs quite readily as eggs (without water) through the post.  This paper desribes a technique for transgenic modification in killifish, an essential development if killifish is to acquire widespread acceptance as an experimental model organism.

The killifish lifepan is around a fifth of the mouse lifespan and about a tenth of that of the zebrafish.  In fact the lifecycle from egg to reproductive adult is around 40 days, bringing it closer to that of models such as Drosophila. It is interesting to me when a new system is proposed as a model: not all of these are universally useful.  Many systems were adopted almost accidentally - my favourite system Drosophila is a case in point. Others, such as C. elegans were adopted specifically because of experimantally useful biological characteristics (see Sydney Brenner's account of the origins of C. elegans research).

It will be interesting to see how much penetration of the ageing research field the killifish will achieve.  Do any BSRA members use, or plan to use, killifish?

See also:

Di Cicco et al (2011) The short-lived annual fish Nothobranchius furzeri shows a typical teleost aging process reinforced by high incidence of age-dependent neoplasias. Exp Gerontol. 2011 Apr;46(4):249-56.

Valenzano, D.R., et al. (2006a) Temperature affects longevity and age-related locomotor and cognitive decay in the short-lived  fish Nothobranchius furzeri. Aging Cell 5 (3), 275 – 278.

Valenzano, D.R., et al. (2006b) Resveratrol prolongs lifespan and retards the onset of age-related markers in a short-lived vertebrate. Curr. Biol. 16 (3), 296 – 300.