Modeling stripe formation on growing zebrafish tailfins

TL;DR

This paper models stripe formation on zebrafish tailfins, revealing how two cell types can produce patterns and exploring factors influencing pattern development and robustness.

Contribution

It adapts a prior agent-based model to simulate stripe development on tailfins, highlighting the roles of cell interactions, bone rays, and growth.

Findings

Two cell types can produce tailfin stripes in silico

Bone rays and growth influence patterning

Questions raised about pattern robustness

Abstract

As zebrafish develop, black and gold stripes form across their skin due to the interactions of brightly colored pigment cells. These characteristic patterns emerge on the growing fish body, as well as on the anal and caudal fins. While wild-type stripes form parallel to a horizontal marker on the body, patterns on the tailfin gradually extend distally outward. Interestingly, several mutations lead to altered body patterns without affecting fin stripes. Through an exploratory modeling approach, our goal is to help better understand these differences between body and fin patterns. By adapting a prior agent-based model of cell interactions on the fish body, we present an in silico study of stripe development on tailfins. Our main result is a demonstration that two cell types can produce stripes on the caudal fin. We highlight several ways that bone rays, growth, and the body-fin interface may be involved in patterning, and we raise questions for future work related to pattern robustness.