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Updated: May 31, 2026

Drug Treatment and In Vivo Imaging of Osteoblast-Osteoclast Interactions in a Medaka Fish Osteoporosis Model
Published on: January 1, 2017
Generation and characterization of neurogenin1-GFP transgenic medaka with potential for rapid developmental
Chun-Yang Fan1, Steven O Simmons, Sheran H W Law
1Integrated Systems Toxicology and Toxicity Assessment Divisions, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, US EPA, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA.
Abstract:
Fish models such as zebrafish and medaka are increasingly used as alternatives to rodents in developmental and toxicological studies. These developmental and toxicological studies can be facilitated by the use of transgenic reporters that permit the real-time, noninvasive observation of the fish. Here we report the construction and characterization of transgenic medaka lines expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) under the control of the zebrafish neurogenin 1 (ngn1) gene promoter. Neurogenin (ngn1) is a helix-loop-helix transcription factor expressed in proliferating neuronal progenitor cells early in neuronal differentiation and plays a crucial role in directing neurogenesis. GFP expression was detected from 24 h post-fertilization until hatching, in a spatial pattern consistent with the previously reported zebrafish ngn1 expression. Temporal expression of the transgene parallels the expression profile of the endogenous medaka ngn1 transcript. Further, we demonstrate that embryos from the transgenic line permit the non-destructive, real-time screening of ngn1 promoter-directed GFP expression in a 96-well format, enabling higher throughput studies of developmental neurotoxicants. This strain has been deposited with and maintained by the National BioResource Project and is available on request (http://www.shigen.nig.ac.jp/medaka/strainDetailAction.do?quickSearch=true&strainId=5660).

