Behavioral analysis and protein folding in zebrafish larvae

Feng, Ruopei

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106446 Copy

Description

Title

Behavioral analysis and protein folding in zebrafish larvae

Author(s)

Feng, Ruopei

Issue Date

2019-11-18

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Gruebele, Martin
• Chemla, Yann R

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Gruebele, Martin

Committee Member(s)

• Nelson, Mark E
• Lu, Yi

Department of Study

Chemistry

Discipline

Chemistry

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• zebrafish
• danio rerio
• behavior
• protein folding

Abstract

The zebrafish, Danio rerio, is a very important vertebrate model organism with growing popularity in biology and neuroscience. My thesis work covered two topics centered on zebrafish. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 focused on the swimming behavior of the animal. This topic is of great interest because animal behavior is the direct reflection of neural activity. In particular, because of the episodic nature of the swimming behavior of larval zebrafish, the quantitative analysis of its behavior presents potential in bridging behavior and underlying neural control. In Chapter 1, I looked into the escape response behavior in 2D. Combining an objective behavior analysis approach with a simple neurokinematic model, I was able to explain the difference between two types of escape response behavior by the difference in their corresponding neural circuits. The results from my non-invasive analysis agreed with previous findings in invasive electrophysiological studies, in contradiction with some unconstrained swimming studies. In Chapter 2, I extended the swimming behavior analysis into three dimensions. I developed a physical model-based tracking algorithm that captured both fish position and shape in 3D during swim bouts. I analyzed the swimming behavior in a 3D environment and compared with the behavior in 2D. My results showed a distinction between the behavior in 2D and 3D environments and this distinction revealed that past studies in 2D may not faithfully capture the behavioral repertoire of larval zebrafish in the natural environment. In Chapter 3, still using zebrafish as the model organism, I studied protein folding dynamics in differentiated tissues in a living organism. With CPLC postdoc Caitlin Davis, I developed a customized pipeline that integrates meganuclease-mediated mosaic transformation with fluorescence-detected temperature-jump microscopy to probe dynamics and stability of endogenously expressed proteins in different tissues of living zebrafish.

Graduation Semester

2019-12

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106446

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2019 Ruopei Feng

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