Fig. 1

Exocrine-tissue-specific zebrafish cell ablation systems. (A) Construct used to generate ela:casp8 transgenics (black arrowheads indicate promoter direction). (B) Brightfield and epifluorescence images of 7 dpf larvae showing E2Crimson signals in untreated control animals and after ablation with 5 µM Dim for 48 h. (C) Relative expression levels of ela3l (left) and trypsin (right) mRNA as revealed by qPCR analyses of whole-embryo RNA preparations of control larvae and larvae treated with 1.6, 5 and 8 µM Dim for 48 and 96 h, normalized to β-actin levels. (D) Confocal projection of untreated 5 dpf larva and larva treated for 8 h with 5 µM Dim labelled by TUNEL staining (green). (E) Construct used to generate the ela:DTR transgenics. (F) Brightfield and epifluorescence images of 9 dpf untreated larvae showing exocrine-specific expression of E2Crimson and strongly reduced expression of E2Crimson after incubation in 15 µg/ml DT for 96 h. (G) Relative expression levels of ela3l (left) and trypsin (right) mRNA as revealed by qPCR analyses of whole-embryo RNA preparations of control larvae and larvae treated with 10 and 15 µg/ml DT for 48 and 96 h, normalized to β-actin levels. (H) Confocal projection of untreated 7 dpf larva and larva treated for 72 h with 15 µg/ml DT labeled by TUNEL staining (green). Values are mean+s.e.m. of n=5 embryos per sample and >3 biological replicates. Scale bars: 150 µm (B,F) and 20 µm (D,H).