Spatiotemporal expression of carnitine palmitoyltransferase I genes during zebrafish development and heart regeneration.

Abstract

Carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 (CPT1) is a key regulatory enzyme in fatty acid metabolism, responsible for the translocation of long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondria for β-oxidation in diverse biological contexts. Recent studies implicated the critical role of cpt1 genes during zebrafish development and heart regeneration; however, a comprehensive characterization of their spatiotemporal expression dynamics remains lacking. Here, we systematically analyzed the expression profiles of four cpt1 paralogs (cpt1aa, cpt1ab, cpt1b, and cpt1a2b) during zebrafish embryogenesis and the expression of cpt1ab and cpt1b during zebrafish heart regeneration. Our results reveal that these paralogs exhibit distinct spatiotemporal expression patterns during zygotic development. While cpt1aa and cpt1ab share high sequence conservation (77%), their expression patterns diverge substantially. Conversely, cpt1ab and cpt1b display convergent cardiac and somitic expression despite lower sequence similarity (53%). Following ventricular ablation, cpt1b expression transiently ceased then recovered during regeneration, whereas cpt1ab remained unchanged. These findings shed light on the evolutionary conservation and functional divergence of cpt1 paralogs, which establish a critical foundation for elucidating paralog-specific roles in fatty acid metabolism during vertebrate development and regeneration.