斑马鱼作为一种重要的工具进行肝脏疾病研究

随着肝胆相关疾病发病率的增加,深入理解肝病发展过程中分子、细胞和生理因素在中医药临床诊断和治疗中的作用显得尤为重要。合适的动物模型能够帮助针对性的识别相关疾病的可能机制。斑马鱼Danio rerio模型传统上主要用于研究胚胎发育,近些年已经被逐渐的用于肝脏疾病、相关药物筛选和评价等方面的研究。斑马鱼胚胎发育迅速,5日龄幼鱼的消化器官全部成熟。在此阶段内,它们可发展为由发育缺陷或化合物诱导的肝胆疾病。斑马鱼肝脏在细胞组成、功能、信号传导、对损伤的反应以及介导肝脏疾病的细胞过程等方面与人类相似。不仅如此,人类和斑马鱼之间基因、蛋白的高度保守性,使其成为研究肝脏疾病基本机制的一个可替代系统。因此,可以通过基因筛查以鉴定涉及特定疾病过程的新基因,通过化学筛查作用于特定过程的药物。该文介绍了斑马鱼作为模式系统的实验属性,并强调斑马鱼模型在肝脏疾病等方面的,尤其是脂肪肝方面,相关病理机制以及药物筛选、评价的研究进展,以期为未来中医药肝毒性评价提供思路和技术。

Study on liver diseases with zebrafish as an important tool

With the increasing incidence of hepatobiliary diseases,it is particularly important to understand the role of molecular,cellular and physiological factors in the clinical diagnosis and treatment with traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)in the development of liver disease.Appropriate animal models can help us identify the possible mechanisms of relevant diseases.Danio rerio(zebrafish)model was traditionally used to study embryonic development,and has been gradually used in screening and evaluation of liver diseases and relevant drug in recent years.Zebrafish embryos develop rapidly and the digestive organs of 5-day-old juvenile fish are all mature.At this stage,they may develop hepatobiliary diseases induced by developmental defects or compounds.Zebrafish liver is similar to human liver in cell composition,function,signal transduction,response to injury and cell process mediating liver disease.Furthermore,due to the high conservation of genes and proteins between humans and zebrafish,zebrafish becomes an alternative system for studying basic mechanisms of liver disease.Therefore,genetic screening could be performed to identify new genes involving specific disease processes,and chemical screening could be made for drugs in specific processes.This paper briefly introduced the experimental properties of zebrafish as model system,emphasized the study progress of zebrafish models for pathological mechanism of liver diseases,especially fatty liver,and drug screening and evaluation,so as to provide ideas and techniques for the future liver toxicity assessment of TCM.