An Efficient and Reproducible Method for the Isolation and Culture of Primary Cardiomyocytes from Adult Zebrafish.

Zebrafish is a popular animal model in regeneration studies due to their ability to regenerate the heart. Primary cardiomyocytes could be an alternative tool for studying the intrinsic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease . Thus, our objective is to develop an efficient protocol to isolate primary cardiomyocytes from zebrafish hearts. Low concentration of digestive enzyme (0.5 mg/mL collagenase type II) was utilized in our protocol to obtain single-cell suspension. The ventricles were fragmented, mechanically pipetted, and constantly shaken to ensure adequate contact between the tissues and the enzyme. Preplating the cell suspension onto culture plates for 2 h helped remove cardiac fibroblasts. The purity of isolated cells was validated by flow cytometry analysis of transgenic zebrafish with cardiomyocyte-specific expression of enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) or endothelial cell-specific expression of mCherry. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis revealed a high level of the purity, with cardiac fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and epicardial cell markers scarcely detected in the purified cells. Altogether, this study established a reproducible protocol for isolating primary cardiomyocytes with high purity and activity from adult zebrafish hearts that can be cultured for up to 4 weeks. This protocol provides a valuable tool for studying the intrinsic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease using primary cardiomyocytes.