Rapid reverse genetics systems for Nothobranchius furzeri, a suitable model organism to study vertebrate aging (Ishitani Lab, in Scientific Reports)

The African turquoise killifish Nothobranchius furzeri (N. furzeri) is a useful model organism for studying aging, age-related diseases, and embryonic diapause. 

In the present study, we established the novel reverse genetics methods for N. furzeri, a rising model organism, by optimizing the CRISPR/Cas9 system as follows:
(1)  The triple-target CRISPR-mediated single-gene disruption method can produce a whole-body biallelic knockout in N. furzeri in the F0 generation with almost 100 % probability.
(2)  The method for generating genetically mosaic individuals.
(3)  The method for easily generating knock-in fluorescent reporters that reflect endogenous gene expression patterns in the F0 generation.
These methods drastically reduce the duration of experiments, and we think that these advances will facilitate rapid identification of the genes and pathways that are critical for aging and diapause throwing light on the unexplored biological phenomena.

This article was published in Scientific Reports, on July 8, 2022

Title: “Rapid reverse genetics systems for Nothobranchius furzeri, a suitable model organism to study vertebrate aging”

Authors: Masayuki Oginuma, Moana Nishida, Tomomi Ohmura-Adachi, Kota Abe, Shohei Ogamino, Chihiro Mogi, Hideaki Matsui, Tohru Ishitani