Have you ever thought of the impact of the EggSorter in the development of your zebrafish embryos?
This white paper presents a set of trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of the EggSorter in standardising the sorting process of zebrafish embryos.
Results demonstrate that the use of the EggSorter does not induce adverse effects on the development of zebrafish embryos.
This white paper presents a set of trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of the EggSorter in standardising the sorting process of zebrafish embryos.
Results demonstrate that the use of the EggSorter does not induce adverse effects on the development of zebrafish embryos.
ABSTRACT
In the past decade, the zebrafish has become an increasingly powerful experimental model in basic biomedical research. These fish represent a viable and cost-effective alternative to mammalian animal models as they possess many favourable qualities, including optical transparency, the ability to be produced on demand in large quantities, and their early developmental stages are generally not subject to regulations for animal study in most locations. Together, these and other features make the zebrafish model one that is uniquely suitable for high throughput studies.
In an effort to capitalise on the potential of this system, Bionomous has developed the EggSorter, a device that automates sorting and dispensing of the zebrafish embryos prior to hatching. The automation of these processes saves labour and improves reproducibility compared to traditional manual techniques.
In this white paper, we describe a set of trials that evaluated the performance of the EggSorter and its impact on the health and well-being of zebrafish embryos run through the device. Specifically we examined whether or not 1) manipulation by the device would influence the rate of development, 2) contact and exposure within the device would result in any toxic side effects on the embryos, and 3) repeat runs of the same embryos through the device would have any deleterious impacts. We observed no significant effect on any of the three measured conditions on zebrafish embryos up to 120 hours post-fertilisation.
These results suggest that the EggSorter can be used safely as a tool to increase the efficiency and standardise the sorting of zebrafish embryos, as it does not induce any negative effects on their development.
MAIN FIGURES
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CONCLUSION
Bionomous has developed a device, the EggSorter, to automate and standardise the sorting process of zebrafish embryos. The aim of this white paper is to certify that this device does not influence the viability and development of zebrafish embryos.
Three experiments were conducted: a viability test of zebrafish embryos at 120 hpf, a toxicity test from 5 to 120 hpf, and an additional viability test at 120 hpf with embryos running up to three times in the device.
The first viability experiment showed that there was no measurable difference in the survival of zebrafish embryos subjected to manual handling vs. handled by the EggSorter. The toxicity test demonstrated again no significant differences between the four tested conditions, meaning that the contact and exposure to the device does not have an effect on the development of the embryos. Moreover, results showed that even when a batch of embryos is more fragile, the EggSorter does not induce more stress to their development. There were also no differences in the occurrence or frequencies of malformations between embryos sorted manually or with the EggSorter. A delay in swim bladder inflation (7% observations in total) was observed, but it was distributed equally across the conditions. The last experiment testing multiple runs in the EggSorter did not result in any significant differences compared to the control group.
In conclusion, these results show that the EggSorter does not induce any negative effects on embryonic development, compared to manual sorting and pipetting methods. Thus, the Eggsorter from Bionomous can be used as a tool to safely accelerate and standardise the screening, sorting and dispensing of zebrafish embryos.