Increased anxiety was found in serpini1 knockout zebrafish larval

Abstract

Serpini1, which encodes neuroserpin, has been implicated in the development and normal function of the nervous system. Mutations in serpini1 cause familial encephalopathy, a rare neurodegenerative disorder characterized with neuroserpin inclusion bodies. However, function of neuroserpin in the nervous system is not fully understood. In this study, we generated a novel serpini1 mutant zebrafish model to investigate the loss of function of neuroserpin. Serpini1- deficient mutation was created with the CRISPR/Cas9 technique. No severe morphological characteristics were found in serpini1- deficient zebrafish. Serpini1^-/- zebrafish larvae did not cause locomotor defects but displayed anxiety-like behavior. Extension of motoneurons axon defect was observed in serpini1^-/- zebrafish. Furthermore, RNA-sequencing analysis revealed that loss of serpini1 resulted in affected expression of neurodegeneration-related genes.

Keywords: Anxiety; Axon defect; Mutant zebrafish model; Neurodegeneration; serpini1.