Novel characteristics of the cultured lumpfish cyclopterus lumpus eye during post-hatch larval and juvenile developmental stages

Ahmad, Raahyma (2019) Novel characteristics of the cultured lumpfish cyclopterus lumpus eye during post-hatch larval and juvenile developmental stages. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus (C. lumpus), superorder teleostei, is an ocean fish that relies on healthy vision in the wild and in culture to see and eat prey or feed. Although the use of C. lumpus in aquaculture is growing and there is reason to believe that this fish can be used as a model system for visual research, the visual system of post hatch developing C. lumpus has not been studied in detail. To that end, we systematically analyzed the characteristics of the C. lumpus eye and retina during cultured post hatch developmental stages. Post hatch developing cultured C. lumpus eye and retinal tissues share a number of features typically conserved in other teleost fish. However, cultured C. lumpus possess some novel ocular and retinal features different from previous descriptions of other teleosts, including a prominent retractor lentis pigmented tissue closely associated with the vascular rete mirabile, peripherally located lobes of separate retinal tissue containing proliferative cells, extensive tapetum material of varying thickness, prominent fundus stripes and an elongated rod-shaped optic nerve stalk, all observed through gross observation, histology, fundus imaging and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) retinal imaging. . Immunohistochemical staining using alpha smooth muscle actin and proliferating cell nuclear antigen revealed that post hatch developing cultured C. lumpus also developmentally regulate a protein homologous to alpha smooth muscle actin in strikingly dense continuous bands in the plexiform layers of the retina. The novel features of the eye and retina of cultured C. lumpus described here could contribute to our understanding of fitness and survival of C. lumpus in a widely ranging habitat and have implications in human visual health and disease.

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