Fishing News
Zebrafish offer scientists a new subject for study
By Bill Neill
To most people, there's nothing rare or valuable about zebrafish, which are sold at local pet stores primarily as live prey for carnivorous acquarium fish. But a group of researchers at Oregon Health & Science University think the fish are an ideal model organism to study genes, mutations and the effects of various compounds.
Znomics, the company founded in February by the OHSU scientists, is focused on using zebrafish to help discover new drugs. The name is a combination of the "Z" in zebrafish with the word genomics, which refers to efforts to characterize the genome, or the entire collection of genes in an organism.
Since zebrafish are vertebrates, their bodies are more similar to humans than the fruit fly, which is frequently used in scientific research. Although fish are not mammals like laboratory mice, they cost less to raise, require less space and develop much more rapidly. Scientists can watch their development from egg to embryo in a matter of days. The transparent embryo develops outside the mother fish, making it easy to observe deformities in its internal organs. Each female zebrafish lays hundreds of eggs, providing opportunities to study the genetic characteristics of many individual offspring.
Not only do they share some of the same organs with humans, they are also susceptible to many of the same diseases, such as cancer, which makes them useful for cancer studies. Drugs used by humans, such as Lipitor to reduce cholesterol, also have effects on zebrafish.
The research director of Znomics, Dr. Wenbiao Chen, is a scientist in the Vollum Institute at OHSU, investigating deformities in fish caused by manipulating their genes. The technique he uses, insertional mutagenesis, is accomplished by micro-injection of a virus into the zebrafish embryo, where it will infect the cells and be integrated into the genome. His efforts are aimed at finding new genes and understanding their function.
Click Here for Full Story
|
|
