Check out Abbi, Amra, and Thomas’s methods paper “Imaging the early zebrafish embryo centrosomes… to understand spindle formation.” If you love spindles, you’ll love looking at them in the zebrafish embryo! Big, dynamic, and of course PRETTY! This method’s paper was based on our recently graduate PhD student, Lindsay Rathbun and our current PhD candidate, Abbi, studies on centrosome dynamics in the early embryo using zebrafish and C. elegans.
During the earliest division stages, zebrafish embryos have large cells that divide rapidly and synchronously to create a cellular layer on top of the yolk. In this study we describe a protocol for monitoring spindle dynamics during these early embryonic divisions. We outline techniques for injecting zebrafish embryos with small-molecule inhibitors toward polo-like kinases, preparing and mounting embryos for three-dimensional imaging using confocal microscopy. These techniques are used to understand how the early zebrafish embryo’s centrosome constructs the mitotic spindle.