Simultaneous Calcium Imaging and Glucose Stimulation in Living Zebrafish to Investigate In Vivo β-Cell Function

The pancreatic β-cells sustain systemic glucose homeostasis by producing and secreting insulin according to the blood glucose levels. Defects in β-cell function are associated with hyperglycemia that can lead to diabetes. During the process of insulin secretion, β-cells experience an influx of Ca²⁺. Thus, imaging the glucose-stimulated Ca²⁺ influx using genetically encoded calcium indicators (GECIs) provides an avenue to studying β-cell function. Previously, studies showed that isolated zebrafish islets expressing GCaMP6s exhibit significant Ca²⁺ activity upon stimulation with defined glucose concentrations. However, it is paramount to study how β-cells respond to glucose not in isolation, but in their native environment, where they are systemically connected, vascularized, and densely innervated. To this end, the study leveraged the optical transparency of the zebrafish larvae at early stages of development to illuminate β-cell activity in vivo. Here, a detailed protocol for Ca²⁺ imaging and glucose stimulation to investigate β-cell function in vivo is presented. This technique allows to monitor the coordinated Ca²⁺ dynamics in β-cells with single-cell resolution. Additionally, this method can be applied to work with any injectable solution such as small molecules or peptides. Altogether, the protocol illustrates the potential of the zebrafish model to investigate islet coordination in vivo and to characterize how environmental and genetic components might affect β-cell function.