Key result
A novel in vivo ECG recording platform and analysis program (zERG) for adult zebrafish successfully evaluated normal ECG trait variation and the effects of flecainide acetate and a Long QT model.
Why the study?
Current zebrafish ECG collection strategies have not adequately addressed the consistent acquisition of high-quality traces or sources of phenotypic variation that could obscure data interpretation.
The development of a novel ECG recording platform and analysis program for adult zebrafish provides a robust approach to evaluate zebrafish models of human cardiac electrophysiological phenotypes.
Platform enables reliable adult zebrafish ECG phenotyping; leaves open translation to human arrhythmia research pending validation.
Clinically pertinent electrocardiogram (ECG) data from model systems, such as zebrafish, are crucial for illuminating factors contributing to human cardiac electrophysiological abnormalities and disease. Current zebrafish ECG collection strategies have not adequately addressed the consistent acquisition of high-quality traces or sources of phenotypic variation that could obscure data interpretation. Thus, we developed a novel platform to ensure high-quality recording of in vivo subdermal adult zebrafish ECGs and zebrafish ECG reading GUI (zERG), a program to acquire measurements from traces that commercial software cannot examine owing to erroneous peak calling. We evaluate normal ECG trait variation, revealing highly reproducible intervals and wave amplitude variation largely driven by recording artifacts, and identify sex and body size as potential confounders to PR, QRS and QT intervals. With this framework, we characterize the effect of the class I anti-arrhythmic drug flecainide acetate on adults, provide support for the impact of a Long QT syndrome model, and establish power calculations for this and other studies. These results highlight our pipeline as a robust approach to evaluate zebrafish models of human cardiac electrophysiological phenotypes.
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Duong et al. (2021) studied Cardiac electrophysiological abnormalities. In vivo subdermal ECG recording platform and zERG analysis program was evaluated on ECG trait variation (PR, QRS, and QT intervals). A novel in vivo ECG recording platform and analysis program (zERG) for adult zebrafish successfully evaluated normal ECG trait variation and the effects of flecainide acetate and a Long QT model.
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