Honours Projects in Zebrafish Genetics and Alzheimer's Disease

Honours projects in the Zebrafish Genetics laboratory typically use molecular genetic and cell biology techniques to investigate the function of Alzheimers disease genes. Projects are planned to give our Honours students a very good chance of obtaining valuable experimental data combined with the excitement of discovering something very novel. All our work is performed with the expectation of possible eventual publication.

We typically accept up to two Honours students into our laboratory each year. Many of these have progressed to become Ph.D. students in our laboratory and/or have been employed to use their skills to service the zebrafish research needs of other laboratories.

Since our research field is progressing quite rapidly, please contact the lab head, Michael Lardelli, to discuss possible Honours projects.

Some of the techniques in common use in our laboratory include:

• Injection into embryos of RNA, DNA and oligonucleotides
• In situ transcript hybridisation on whole embryos to observe patterns of gene expression
• Common molecular biology techniques for e.g. gene cloning and sequencing
• Common techniques for protein analysis, e.g. western blotting and immunoprecipitation
• Generation of transgenic fish
• Phylogenetic analysis of gene evolution
• Microscopic analysis of embryo anatomy