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Fish to learn: insights into the effects of environmental chemicals on eye development and visual function in zebrafish

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Abstract

Vision is the most essential sense system for the human being. Congenital visual impairment affects millions of people globally. It is increasingly realized that visual system development is an impressionable target of environmental chemicals. However, due to inaccessibility and ethical issues, the use of humans and other placental mammals is constrained, which limits our better understanding of environmental factors on ocular development and visual function in the embryonic stage. Therefore, as complementing laboratory rodents, zebrafish has been the most frequently employed to understand the effects of environmental chemicals on eye development and visual function. One of the major reasons for the increasing use of zebrafish is their polychromatic vision. Zebrafish retinas are morphologically and functionally analogous to those of mammalian, as well as evolutionary conservation among vertebrate eye. This review provides an update on harmful effects from exposure to environmental chemicals, involving metallic elements (ions), metal-derived nanoparticles, microplastics, nanoplastics, persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, and pharmaceutical pollutants on the eye development and visual function in zebrafish embryos. The collected data provide a comprehensive understanding of environmental factors on ocular development and visual function. This report highlights that zebrafish is promising as a model to identify hazardous toxicants toward eye development and is hopeful for developing preventative or postnatal therapies for human congenital visual impairment.

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Data Availability

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The present study was financially supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (grant Nos. 2021A1515111093, 2023A1515011878, and 2023A1515012357) and the Special Grant for Key Area Programs of Guangdong Department of Education (grant No. 2021ZDZX2023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment, Department of Preventive Medicine, Shantou University Medical College, Xinling Rd., No. 22, Shantou, 515041, Guangdong, China

    Wenlong Huang, Jiajun Peng, Qiong Zhang, Xiaoling Shi & Kusheng Wu

  2. Department of Forensic Medicine, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, 515041, Guangdong, China

    Wenlong Huang

  3. Department of Anaesthesiology, Shantou Central Hospital, Affiliated Shantou Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Shantou, 515041, Guangdong, China

    Tianjie Wu

  4. School of Life Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, Fujian, China

    Ruotong Wu

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  1. Wenlong Huang
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Contributions

Wenlong Huang: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, funding acquisition, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing; Tianjie Wu: data curation, methodology, and investigation; Ruotong Wu: data curation and formal analysis; Jiajun Peng: data curation and methodology; Qiong Zhang: data curation and methodology; Xiaoling Shi: data curation and methodology; Kusheng Wu: conceptualization, formal analysis, funding acquisition, resources, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Kusheng Wu.

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Huang, W., Wu, T., Wu, R. et al. Fish to learn: insights into the effects of environmental chemicals on eye development and visual function in zebrafish. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 73018–73030 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-27629-3

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