ArticleZebrafish2014
Enhanced cell-specific ablation in zebrafish using a triple mutant of Escherichia coli nitroreductase.
Article in Zebrafish, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Müller glial and microglial responses coupled to recovery of cone photoreceptors following limited cone ablation in zebrafish retina.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Two axolotl-adapted cell-ablation platforms reveal macrophage-dependent processes essential for spinal-cord and skeletal regeneration.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Pth4 neurons define a novel hypothalamic circuit that promotes sleep via brainstem monoaminergic neurons.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Pth4 neurons define a novel hypothalamic circuit that promotes sleep via brainstem monoaminergic neurons.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Pancreatic exocrine damage induces beta cell stress in zebrafish larvae.Diabetologia · 2025Article
- Spatiotemporal control of cell ablation using Ronidazole with Nitroreductase in Drosophila.Developmental biology · 2025Article
- Automated In Vivo Phenotypic Screening Platform for Identifying Factors that Affect Cell Regeneration Kinetics.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Selective Cell Ablation Using an Improved Prodrug-Converting Nitroreductase.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
- A metagenomic library cloning strategy that promotes high-level expression of captured genes to enable efficient functional screening.Cell chemical biology · 2023Article
- Transcriptomic comparison of two selective retinal cell ablation paradigms in zebrafish reveals shared and cell-specific regenerative responses.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Exploring association of melanoma-specific Bcl-xL with tumor immune microenvironment.Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR · 2023Article
- The Crystal Structure of Engineered Nitroreductase NTR 2.0 and Impact of F70A and F108Y Substitutions on Substrate Specificity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Review
- Investigation of Kelussia Odoratissima and Angelica Sinensis Similarities in Zebrafish-based In-vivo Bioactivity Assays and Their Chemical Composition.Galen medical journal · 2023Article
- NTR 2.0: a rationally engineered prodrug-converting enzyme with substantially enhanced efficacy for targeted cell ablation.Nature methods · 2022Article
- The minimal structure for iodotyrosine deiodinase function is defined by an outlier protein from the thermophilic bacterium Thermotoga neapolitana.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2021Article
- Article
- Enteroendocrine cells sense bacterial tryptophan catabolites to activate enteric and vagal neuronal pathways.Cell host & microbe · 2021Article
- Spinal cord precursors utilize neural crest cell mechanisms to generate hybrid peripheral myelinating glia.eLife · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Transgenic expression of bacterial nitroreductase (NTR) facilitates chemically-inducible targeted cell ablation. In zebrafish, the NTR system enables studies of cell function and cellular regeneration. Metronidazole (MTZ) has become the most commonly used prodrug substrate for eliciting cell loss in NTR-expressing transgenic zebrafish due to the cell-specific nature of its cytotoxic derivatives. Unfortunately, MTZ treatments required for effective cell ablation border toxic effects, and, thus, likely incur undesirable nonspecific effects. Here, we tested whether a triple mutant variant of NTR, previously shown to display improved activity in bacterial assays, can solve this issue by promoting cell ablation in zebrafish using reduced prodrug treatment regimens. We generated several complementary transgenic zebrafish lines expressing either wild-type or mutant NTR (mutNTR) in specific neural cell types, and assayed prodrug-induced cell ablation kinetics using confocal time series imaging and plate reader-based quantification of fluorescent reporters expressed in targeted cell types. The results show that cell ablation can be achieved in mutNTR expressing transgenic lines with markedly shortened prodrug exposure times and/or at lower prodrug concentrations. The mutNTR variant characterized here can circumvent problematic nonspecific/toxic effects arising from low prodrug conversion efficiency, thus increasing the effectiveness and versatility of this selective cell ablation methodology.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.