Cadmium-induced ectopic apoptosis in zebrafish embryos

In this study, we tested the hypothesis that cadmium-induced developmental toxicity was mediated via ectopic occurrence of apoptosis during embryonic development. We employed confocal microscopy to acquire images of whole-mount staining of apoptotic cells in zebrafish embryo exposed to 100 muM cadmium from 5 hours post fertilisation (hpf) to 28 hpf. Three-dimensional reconstruction of the images was performed and the spatial and temporal distributions of apoptotic cells in the embryos were compared. In cadmium-treated embryos with varying degrees of gross developmental malformations, significantly higher numbers of apoptotic cells were detected with this method. In order to detect the precise locations of apoptotic cells, we performed terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL) assay in sectioned embryos. In the degenerating neural tube of cadmium-treated embryos apoptotic cells were detected, while in the healthy neural tube of the untreated controls no apoptotic cells were found. We then employed flow cytometry to investigate whether cadmium exposure would affect the dynamics of apoptosis or induce any abnormalities in cell-cycle progression. It appeared that cadmium did not induce cell-cycle arrest. The percentages of apoptotic cells did not differ in the two groups at 13, 16 or 19 hpf. At 28 hpf, however, a significantly higher percentage of apoptotic cells were found in the cadmium-treated group. Exposure to cadmium, therefore, induced ectopic apoptosis at 28 hpf without affecting the dynamics of apoptosis at earlier developmental stages.