Cell ablation is a key method in the research fields of developmental biology, tissue regeneration, and tissue homeostasis. Eliminating specific cell populations allows for characterizing interactions that control cell differentiation, death, behavior, and spatial organization of cells. Current methodologies for inducing cell death suffer from relatively slow kinetics, making them unsuitable for analyzing rapid events and following primary and immediate consequences of the ablation. To address this, we developed a cell-ablation system that is based on bacterial toxin/anti-toxin proteins and enables rapid and cell-autonomous elimination of specific cell types and organs in zebrafish embryos. A unique feature of this system is that it uses an anti-toxin, which allows for controlling the degree and timing of ablation and the resulting phenotypes. The transgenic zebrafish generated in this work represent a highly efficient tool for cell ablation, and this approach is applicable to other model organisms as demonstrated here for Drosophila.

细胞消融是发育生物学、组织再生和组织稳态研究领域的关键方法。消除特定的细胞群可以表征控制细胞分化、死亡、行为和细胞空间组织的相互作用。目前诱导细胞死亡的方法学动力学相对缓慢，使其不适合分析快速事件和跟踪消融的主要和直接后果。为了解决这个问题，我们开发了一种基于细菌毒素/抗毒素蛋白的细胞消融系统，能够快速和细胞自主地消除斑马鱼胚胎中的特定细胞类型和器官。该系统的一个独特之处在于它使用了一种抗毒素，可以控制消融的程度和时间以及由此产生的表型。果蝇。