Influences of Domoic Acid Exposure on Cardiac Development and the Expression of Cardiovascular Relative Genes in Zebrafish (Daniorerio) Embryos

Domoic acid (DA) is a highly toxic phycotoxin that is generated from marine diatoms Pseudonitzschia spp. It has been found that bivalves or cephalopods can accumulate DA to a high level through their feeding activities and cause illness or death in consumers. Zebrafish have been used as a model to investigate and characterize the developmental toxicity of DA. However, there is no report about the relationship between DA and cardiac development in zebrafish. Here, zebrafish embryos were exposed to DA with at the dose of 1, 10, 100, and 1000 ng/L. High mortality and some developmental toxicity including pericardial and yolk sac edema, dorsal curvature, and cardiac defects were observed in the DA-treated larvae. We found that DA exposure not only disrupted normal cardiac development but also altered the expression of some cardiac development correlated genes and calcium ion channels, such as Anf, Bnp, Atp2a2a, Atp2a2b, Ncx1h, Ryr2b, and Tbx5. (C) 2015Wiley Periodicals, Inc.