Establishment of the thermotolerant Arabian killifish as a model for infection studies

Why did we fund this project?

This award aims to replace the use of some mouse studies by establishing an Arabian killifish embryo model of Candida albicans infection.

Many pathogenic traits, such as cellular kinetics and protein production, are temperature sensitive and some pathogens, such as Cryptococcus neoformans and Candida albicans, upregulate specific genes when exposed to temperatures of 37^oC. Dr Tetsuhiro Kudoh and colleagues have previously demonstrated that Arabian killifish can act as an infection model for C. albicans and have many of the same technical advantages for infection studies as zebrafish but are able to be acclimated to high temperature environments (37 – 40^oC) appropriate for studying human disease causing pathogens. They will now generate transgenic killifish, including fluorescently labelled immune cells to enable real-time imaging and transgenic fish with mutations in genes that predispose patients to C. albicans infections.