Disruption of immune responses hindered cardiac repair in zebrafish

We investigated the role and programming of early immune responses during zebrafish heart regeneration. We found zebrafish treated with anti-inflammatory steroid, beclomethasone, would suffer significantly reduction of its heart regenerative ability, leading to excessive collagen deposition in wound. Microarray approach was used to evaluate the differential expression of heart transcriptome between normal and impaired healing zebrafish, which provides an overall assessment of significant genes that were important for triggering regeneration in the hemostasis-inflammation phase. Three sets of samples each containing 10 zebrafish hearts were used: sham operation, DMSO-1dpa, beclomethasone-1dpa. (dpa= days post amputation) Objects were pre-exposed to water containing 0.25μM beclomethasone or DMSO for 1 day. After ventricular resection surgery, objects were sacrificed with their ventricles harvested at the next day (i.e. 1dpa)