Expression of in the Developing and Adult Nervous System of the Zebrafish ().

Septins are a highly conserved family of small GTPases that form cytoskeletal filaments. Their cellular functions, especially in the nervous system, still remain largely enigmatic, but there are accumulating lines of evidence that septins play important roles in neuronal physiology and pathology. In order to further dissect septin function in the nervous system a detailed temporal resolved analysis in the genetically well tractable model vertebrate zebrafish () is crucially necessary. To close this knowledge gap we here provide a reference dataset describing the expression of selected septins (, and ) in the zebrafish central nervous system. Strikingly, proliferation zones are devoid of expression of all three septins investigated, suggesting that they have a role in post-mitotic neural cells. Our finding that three septins are mainly expressed in non-proliferative regions was further confirmed by double-stainings with a proliferative marker. Our RNA hybridization (ISH) study, detecting , and mRNAs, shows that all three septins are expressed in largely overlapping regions of the developing brain. However, the expression of is much more confined compared to and . In contrast, the expression of all the three analyzed septins is largely similar in the adult brain.