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The zebrafish facility in the Karp Family Research Laboratories houses tens of thousands of fish. |
The zebrafish is a striped tropical fish, no longer than your pinky finger, that looks like it would be more at home in someone's aquarium than in a laboratory. But zebrafish are powerful organisms for stem cell, developmental and genetic research:
- They are surprisingly similar to us from a genetic
standpoint.
- They can be housed at high densities.
- They are relatively inexpensive to care for.
- Adult female zebrafish can lay 300 eggs each week.
- They can absorb drugs directly from their tank water through their permeable skin.
- Their embryos are transparent, offering a window into their bodies; some lines remain transparent through adulthood.
"The zebrafish have turned out to be ideal for small-molecule screening," according to Louis Kunkel, PhD, director of the Program in Genomics. Dr. Kunkel recently used the fish to find a drug that might circumvent the genetic error underlying Duchenne muscular dystrophy. "Because we can grow and test so many at a time, we were able to screen 1,200 chemicals very quickly."
With a zebrafish model of melanoma, Leonard I. Zon, MD, director of the Stem Cell Research Program and a pioneer in zebrafish research, recently found a new melanoma-causing gene and a new potential treatment regimen that includes a drug already on the market for treating forms of arthritis. In addition, Dr. Zon's discovery, again in zebrafish, that the drug prostaglandin E2 can boost blood stem cells for transplantation is currently being tested in the clinic.
Watch video: on.chbos.org/pv0611fish
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