Zebrafish harbor diverse intestinal macrophage populations including a subset intimately associated with enteric neural processes.

ABSTRACT: Intestinal macrophages are essential for gut health but remain understudied outside of human and mouse systems. Here, we establish zebrafish as a powerful model that provides superior imaging capabilities for whole-gut analysis along all dimensions (anterior-posterior and center-outer axes) for dissecting macrophage biology in gastrointestinal health and disease. We utilized high-resolution imaging to show that the zebrafish gut contains bona fide muscularis and mucosal macrophages, as well as surprisingly large subsets intimately associated with enteric neural processes. Interestingly, most muscularis macrophages span multiple gut layers in stark contrast to their mammalian counterparts typically restricted to a single layer. Using macrophage-deficient irf8 zebrafish, we fou

SUBMITTER: Graves CL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8185245 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature