A new gerontology model to improve brain repair in an aged environment:
The African turquoise killifish
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1
Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Belgium
The African turquoise killifish has a compressed lifespan to cope with the extreme habitat of desiccating pools. As a consequence, this teleost fish has many aging characteristics resembling human aging. We choose to validate this novel animal model to unravel the influences of aging on brain repair after injury. The neuroscience field is in a clear need for such a new short-lived vertebrate model that enables studying the aged cellular environment, known to contribute and aggravate the outcome of many brain diseases, including neurodegenerative disease. Since no effective treatments are available for these diseases, it is imperative to invest in developing new strategies that constrain neurodegeneration and allow induction of neuroregeneration throughout the lifespan.
We injure the telencephalon to induce neuroregeneration in young and old fish. First data show that regeneration is impaired in the aged killifish brain, with stem cells becoming unresponsive to injury, thereby hampering regeneration as observed in the young telencephalon. Ongoing transcriptome and proteome analyses will reveal for which genes/proteins expression should be manipulated in order to rejuvenate the aging stem cell pool and/or environment to reinstall successful regeneration in an aged brain.
Keywords:
Aging,
Neuroregeneration,
Stem Cells,
killifish,
Neurodegenarative diseases
Conference:
13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience , Brussels, Belgium, 24 May - 24 May, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Poster presentation
Topic:
Cellular/Molecular Neuroscience
Citation:
Van Houcke
JM,
Seuntjens
E and
Arckens
L
(2019). A new gerontology model to improve brain repair in an aged environment:
The African turquoise killifish.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
13th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2019.96.00036
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Received:
24 Apr 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Jolien M Van Houcke, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Heverlee, BE-3001, Belgium, jolien.vanhoucke@kuleuven.be