ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell Dev. Biol.
Sec. Morphogenesis and Patterning
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1652723
A potential role of Fgf3 for epibranchial formation in zebrafish
Provisionally accepted
- Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, Republic of Korea
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In fish, epibranchials are dorsal facial skeletal elements composing the branchial basket, which articulate with ceratobranchials ventrally and pharyngobranchials dorsally. They form in the posterior pharyngeal arches through endochondral bone formation. In zebrafish, the development of epibranchial structures has not been described in detail at the genetic and cellular levels compared to the development of the jaw skeleton. Here, we report the developmental process of epibranchial formation in zebrafish and the genetic requirement of Fgf3 in this process. In contrast to the simultaneous formation of epibranchial cartilages 1-4 reported in other fish, we observe a sequential development of epibranchial cartilages posteriorly to anteriorly in zebrafish. While in other fish, epibranchial cartilages develop independently from the ceratobranchial cartilages as a separate chondrification center, we show that their formation is associated with the dorsal end of ceratobranchial cartilages. This occurs as chondrocytes bud out from the dorsal end of ceratobranchial cartilages.Finally, we suggest that Fgf3 is necessary to develop epibranchial cartilages, possibly by controlling the proliferation of chondrocytes at the dorsal end of ceratobranchial cartilages.Our results provide a novel insight into the development of epibranchials and establish a genetic and cellular basis to investigate their developmental mechanism.
Keywords: Epibranchial, Branchial basket, Pharyngeal arches, FGF3, Zebrafish
Received: 24 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jeon, Jin, Joo, Choe, Lee and Choe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chong Pyo Choe, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, Republic of Korea
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