Zebrafish nephrosin helps host defence against Escherichia coli infection.

Abstract

Neutrophils play important roles in innate immunity and are mainly dependent on various enzyme-containing granules to kill engulfed microorganisms. Zebrafish nephrosin (npsn) is specifically expressed in neutrophils; however, its function is largely unknown. Here, we generated an npsn mutant (npsnsmu5 ) via CRISPR/Cas9 to investigate the in vivo function of Npsn. The overall development and number of neutrophils remained unchanged in npsn-deficient mutants, whereas neutrophil antibacterial function was defective. Upon infection with Escherichia coli, the npsnsmu5 mutants exhibited a lower survival rate and more severe bacterial burden, as well as augmented inflammatory response to challenge with infection when compared with wild-type embryos, whereas npsn-overexpressing zebrafish exhibited enhanced host defence against E. coli infection. These findings demonstrated that zebrafish Npsn promotes host defence against bacterial infection. Furthermore, our findings suggested that npsn-deficient and -overexpressing zebrafish might serve as effective models of in vivo innate immunity.

• Authors: Qianqian Di, Qing Lin, Zhibin Huang, Yali Chi, Xiaohui Chen, Wenqing Zhang, Yiyue Zhang
• Journal: Open biology (Open Biol) Vol. 7 Issue 8 (08 2017) ISSN: 2046-2441 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 28835569 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)
• Copyright: © 2017 The Authors.

Chemical References

• Zebrafish Proteins
• Metalloendopeptidases
• nephrosin

Topics

• Animals
• CRISPR-Cas Systems
• Disease Models, Animal
• Embryo, Nonmammalian (immunology, metabolism, microbiology)
• Escherichia coli Infections (genetics, immunology, prevention & control)
• Gene Knockdown Techniques
• Metalloendopeptidases (genetics, metabolism)
• Mutation
• Neutrophils (metabolism)
• Zebrafish
• Zebrafish Proteins (genetics, metabolism)