Skinbow zebrafish scale

Scalebow

This confetti-like rainbow of colors on a zebrafish scale is the result of a technique called skinbow. Each individual cell expresses a gene for a red, blue, and/or green fluorescent protein at a level that is randomly determined, resulting in an array of hues.

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Skinbow zebrafish scale

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Scalebow

This confetti-like rainbow of colors on a zebrafish scale is the result of a technique called skinbow. Each individual cell expresses a gene for a red, blue, and/or green fluorescent protein at a level that is randomly determined, resulting in an array of hues.

What am I looking at?

This is an image of a single zebrafish scale that has been genetically modified using the skinbow technique. The top of the image (1) shows individual skin cells expressing different fluorescent labels at random, as determined by the skinbow technique. The bottom of the image (2) shows the scale’s rigid exterior, which is made of bone.

Biology in the background

Despite their bony exterior, fish scales are considered skin because they arise from the mesoderm layer during development. That being said, you can see from this image that only part of the scale expresses skinbow genes. The bottom half of the scale (in this orientation) is made of bone that inserts into the fish’s body and does not express the color-coding genes, the hallmark of the skinbow technique. However, the top half of the scale, which covers the outermost surface of the fish’s body, hosts skin cells and therefore does express the color-coding skin genes.

A zebrafish scale is about 1,000 micrometers across, or roughly 13 times wider than the width of a human hair.

Technique

This image was captured using confocal microscopy.

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Contributor(s)

Chen-Hui Chen, Duke University