Developmental Toxicity Assessment in Zebrafish - Zebrafish: Methods for Assessing Drug Safety and Toxicity - page 18

Table 2.2 Parameters for Scoring Developmental Toxicity at 5dpf

Common defects Criteria

Heart morphology Missing chambers, abnormal blood flow, asynchrony

Circulation Absent, slow, or fast blood flow; defective vessel pattern

Edema
Pericardial Accumulation of fluid surrounding the heart

Trunk Accumulation of fluid in the interstitial space surrounding

an organ or tissue in the trunk

Eye/head Accumulation of fluid around the eye or brain

Hemorrhage Presence of pooled blood outside of vascular network

Brain morphology Small or misshapen

Brain tissue Brown/opaque tissue

Jaw morphology Short or misshapen jaw

Tail morphology Short, curly or bent tail

Eye morphology Small or misshapen eye(s)

Eye pigmentation Absent or patchy retinal pigmented epithelium

Notochord morphology Notochord that is not straight (e.g., wavy or kinked)

Body pigmentation Significantly higher or lower amount of black or yellow

pigment

Tail/trunk muscle
morphology

Presence of shredded, degenerating muscle within the somites

Motility No movement or recoil after touch by a needle

Fin malformation Absent or small pectoral fins

Liver morphology Absent or abnormal size

Liver tissue Presence of dark brown, opaque tissue with no passage of blood

Intestine malformation Absent, no lumen or no infolded epithelium, does not extend

to anal pore

Intestinal tissue Brown/opaque tissue

anesthetic, to reduce experimental artifacts, these parameters are measured prior to
tricaine addition.
For each concentration, number of zebrafish exhibiting defects is recorded to
obtain percent incidence using formula (2.1):

no : of zebrafish with defects

10

percent incidence ¼ 100

% :

ð 2 : 1 Þ

A concentration-response curve (percent incidence versus concentration) is then
generated for each compound using the nonlinear regression function available in
statistical software (JMP, The SAS Institute).