Abstract
Transgenic zebrafish models are efficiently used to study the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC);thereby informing on their mechanisms of action. However, given the reported differences between zebrafishstrains at the genetical, physiological and behavioral levels; care should be taken before using these transgenicmodels for EDC testing. In the present study, we undertook a set of experiments in different transgenic and/ormutant zebrafish strains of interest for EDC testing: casper, cyp19a1a-eGFP, cyp19a1a-eGFP-casper, cyp11c1-eGFP,cyp11c1-eGFP-casper. Some behavioral traits, and some biochemical and reproductive physiological endpointscommonly used in EDC testing were assessed and compared to those obtained in WT AB zebrafish to ensure thattransgene insertion and/or mutations do not negatively modify basal reproductive physiology or behavior of thefish.Behavioral traits considered as anxiety and sociality have been monitored. Sociality was evaluated bymonitoring the time spent near congeners in a shuttle box while anxiety was evaluated using the Novel tankdiving test. No critical difference was observed between strains for either sociality or anxiety level. Concerningreproduction, no significant difference in the number of eggs laid per female, in the viability of eggs or in thefemale circulating VTG concentrations was noted between the 5 transgenic/mutants and the WT AB zebrafishstudied.In summary, the transgene insertion and the mutations had no influence on the endpoints measured in basalconditions. These results were a prerequisite to the use of these transgenic/mutant models for EDC testing. Nextstep will be to determine the sensitivity of these biological models to chemical exposure to accurately validatetheir use in existing fish assays for EDC testing.