Teratological effects of a panel of sixty water-soluble toxicants on zebrafish development

The zebrafish larva is a promising whole-animal model for safety pharmacology, environmental risk assessment, and developmental toxicity. This model has been used for the high-throughput toxicity screening of various compounds. Our aim here is to identify possible phenotypic markers of teratogenicity in zebrafish embryos that could be used for the assaying compounds for reproductive toxicity. We have screened a panel of 60 water-soluble toxicants to examine their effects on zebrafish development. A total of 22,080 wild-type zebrafish larvae were raised in 250 μL defined buffer in 96-well plates at a plating density of one embryo per well. They were exposed for a 96-h period starting at 24 h post-fertilization. A logarithmic concentration series was used for range-finding, followed by a narrower geometric series for developmental toxicity assessment. A total of 9017 survivors were analyzed at 5 days post-fertilization for nine phenotypes, namely, (1) normal, (2) pericardial oedema, (3) yolk sac oedema, (4) melanophores dispersed, (5) bent tail tip, (6) bent body axis, (7) abnormal Meckel's cartilage, (8) abnormal branchial arches, and (9) uninflated swim bladder. For each toxicant, the EC50 (concentration required to produce one or more of these abnormalities in 50% of embryos) was also calculated. For the majority of toxicants (55/60) there was, at the population level, a statistically significant, concentration-dependent increase in the incidence of abnormal phenotypes among survivors. The commonest abnormalities were pericardial oedema, yolk sac oedema, dispersed melanophores, and uninflated swim bladder. It is possible therefore that these could prove to be general indicators of reproductive toxicity in the zebrafish embryo assay.