A Low-Cost Pulse Generator for Exacerbating Muscle Fiber Detachment Phenotypes in Zebrafish

Muscle fiber detachment from myoseptal boundaries is a common finding in zebrafish models of muscular dystrophies. In some instances, there is a weakening of the interaction between muscle fiber and myosepta, which is yet to manifest as a fiber detachment phenotype. Therefore, to push the fiber detachment of muscle, mutant fish but not their wild-type siblings, beyond their binding threshold, a series of small electrical pulses can be applied to the larvae to create a maximal force contraction and ultimately fiber detachment. To do this, we built a digital pulse generator which delivers four 8 ms 30 V pulses in quick succession, and it has the advantage over older analog approaches to pulse generation because it improves accuracy and is appreciably less expensive. Our pulse generator significantly increases fiber detachment in the laminin-α2 deficient, congenital muscular dystrophy type 1a (MDC1a) model lama2^-/- fish when compared with controls.