Brain atlas of an emerging teleostean model: Nothobranchius furzeri

Nothobranchius furzeri has emerged as a new fish model for neurobiological and age research over recent years, due to the exceptionally short lifespan, age-dependent cognitive/behavioral decline, expression of age-related biomarkers. The growing interest in this teleost has raised the need to construct an atlas of the whole brain of N. furzeri. The study has been carried out on adult specimens belonging to the long lived strain, originating from Mozambique and named MZM 04/10. In the atlas, the external features of brain, images of sections stained with luxol fast bleu/violet and schematic drawings of the most representative sections are showed. The identification and description of brain structures has been carried out on methodological and hodological studies. Comparative analyses have revealed remarkable and peculiar neuroanatomical characteristics of N. furzeri brain architecture. Thus, a comprehensive whole brain atlas of N. furzeri has been constructed aiming to provide a baseline for structural and functional future experiments on this emerging model organism.