Using Zebrafish as a Model

Zebrafish are a flexible model organism and can be used to study a variety of interests from animal behaviour and physiology, to neurobiology, biochemistry and developmental genetics. The bullet points below highlight some of the reasons why the Zebrafish is an ideal vertebrate organism in which to conduct developmental and genetic studies:

• High genome similarity to humans:
  • Zebrafish have 25 chromosomes
  • Zebrafish genes are closely related to human genes, often having the same or very similar roles in development, body function or disease

• Optical transparency:
  • Allows scientists to follow the development of specific cell types or tissues with microscopy
  • Monitor the temporal and spatial expression of specific genes
  • Relatively simple identification of neurons

• Gene knock-down using morpholinos (similar to siRNAs)
  • Ability to perform combinatorial morpholino analyses
  • User adjustable knock-down (varying injection concentrations)
  • Injecting into one half of a 2 cell stage embryo can show very interesting development effects within one animal

• Simple vertebrate system that is amenable to many analyses
• Developmentally very similar to mammals
• Easy to breed in large numbers
• Statistically amenable
• Scientifically manoeuvrable
• Large embryos (easy injections)
• Rapid development (egg to fish in 3 days)
• External development
• Relatively cheap to maintain
• High stock density to real estate ratio
• Virtually every organ system and anatomical feature of the animal is under investigation