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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Embryonic Development
Volume 13 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1503066
fosab, but not fosaa, plays important role in learning and memory in fish-insights from zebrafish gene knockout study
Provisionally accepted- College of Fisheries, Chinese Perch Research Center, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China, Wuhan, China
Abstract:Learning and memory allow individuals to adapt to their environmental needs and survive. Fish have the ability to solve complex learning tasks, associative learning, and flexible spatial memory. The proto-oncogene fos (c-fos) has been reported to be involved in brain development, learning and memory in mammals. However, whether the c-fos plays a vital role in learning and memory in fish is unclear. Almost all fish have two paralogues of c-fos named fosaa and fosab. Thus, the fosaa and fosab knockout zebrafish models were generated by CRISPR/Cas9 technology. In this study, we discovered the brain weight marked reduction in fosaa -/-and fosab -/-zebrafish compared with the wild-type (WT) (AB strain) zebrafish. In the T-maze behavioral assay, the fosab -/-zebrafish took significantly more than the average time to complete the assigned trial as the increase in the days compared to WT zebrafish, while the fosaa - /-zebrafish did not show a notable variance. The average time to complete the trial in fosab -/-zebrafish was significantly higher than in WT zebrafish. The relative mRNA expression level of c-jun in fosab -/-zebrafish was significantly higher than that in WT zebrafish, while the fosaa -/-zebrafish has no discernible trend. Additionally, the phylogenetic and multiple amino acid alignment results indicated that fish fosab has a higher identity with mammals Fos. By integrating the above results, we found that fosab, but not fosaa, may possess a learning and memory function in fish. For the first time, we illustrated the role of fosaa and fosab in learning and memory via c-fos knockout in fish, which can provide new insights into environmental adaptation.
Keywords: fosaa, Fosab, learning and memory, Brain Development, zebrafish 1.Introduction
Received: 28 Sep 2024; Accepted: 07 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhang, Zhu, Lu, Wu and Liang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xu-Fang Liang, College of Fisheries, Chinese Perch Research Center, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China, Wuhan, China
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