Zebrafish models for human acute organophosphorus poisoning

Terrorist use of organophosphorus-based nerve agents and toxic industrial chemicals against civilian populations constitutes a real threat, as demonstrated by the terrorist attacks in Japan in the 1990 s or, even more recently, in the Syrian civil war. Thus, development of more effective countermeasures against acute organophosphorus poisoning is urgently needed. Here, we have generated and validated zebrafish models for mild, moderate and severe acute organophosphorus poisoning by exposing zebrafish larvae to different concentrations of the prototypic organophosphorus compound chlorpyrifos-oxon. Our results show that zebrafish models mimic most of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind this toxidrome in humans, including acetylcholinesterase inhibition, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor activation, and calcium dysregulation as well as inflammatory and immune responses. The suitability of the zebrafish larvae to in vivo high-throughput screenings of small molecule libraries makes these models a valuable tool for identifying new drugs for multifunctional drug therapy against acute organophosphorus poisoning

Genome comparison of Listeria monocytogenes serotype 4a strain HCC23 with selected lineage I and lineage II L. monocytogenes strains and other Listeria strains

More than 98% of reported human listeriosis cases are caused by specific serotypes within genetic lineages I and II. The genome sequence of Listeria monocytogenes lineage III strain HCC23 (serotype 4a) enables whole genomic comparisons across all three L. monocytogenes lineages. Protein cluster analysis indicated that strain HCC23 has the most unique protein pairs with nonpathogenic species Listeria innocua. Orthology analysis of the genome sequences of representative strains from the three L. monocytogenes genetic lineages and L. innocua (CLIP11262) identified 319 proteins unique to nonpathogenic strains HCC23 and CLIP11262 and 58 proteins unique to pathogenic strains F2365 and EGD-e. BLAST comparison of these proteins with all the sequenced L. monocytogenes and L. innocua revealed 126 proteins unique to serotype 4a and/or L. innocua; 14 proteins were only found in pathogenic serotypes. Some of the 58 proteins unique to pathogenic strains F2365 and EGD-e were previously published and are already known to contribute to listerial virulence

Publisher Correction: Therapeutic potential of N-acetylcysteine in acrylamide acute neurotoxicity in adult zebrafish (Scientific Reports, (2019), 9, 1, (16467), 10.1038/s41598-019-53154-w)

Publisher Correction: Therapeutic potential of N-acetylcysteine in acrylamide acute neurotoxicity in adult zebrafish (Scientific Reports, (2019), 9, 1, (16467), 10.1038/s41598-019-53154-w)Supplementary files containing 5 Supplementary datasets and an additional Supplementary Information File were omitted from the original version of this Article. This has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the Article. © 2020, The Author(s).Peer reviewe

Zebrafish models for human acute organophosphorus poisoning

Terrorist use of organophosphorus-based nerve agents and toxic industrial chemicals against civilian populations constitutes a real threat, as demonstrated by the terrorist attacks in Japan in the 1990 s or, even more recently, in the Syrian civil war. Thus, development of more effective countermeasures against acute organophosphorus poisoning is urgently needed. Here, we have generated and validated zebrafish models for mild, moderate and severe acute organophosphorus poisoning by exposing zebrafish larvae to different concentrations of the prototypic organophosphorus compound chlorpyrifos-oxon. Our results show that zebrafish models mimic most of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind this toxidrome in humans, including acetylcholinesterase inhibition, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor activation, and calcium dysregulation as well as inflammatory and immune responses. The suitability of the zebrafish larvae to in vivo high-throughput screenings of small molecule libraries makes these models a valuable tool for identifying new drugs for multifunctional drug therapy against acute organophosphorus poisoning