Zebrafish as a developmental model organism for pediatric research. Pediatr Res 2008 Nov;64(5):470-6
Date
08/06/2008Pubmed ID
18679162DOI
10.1203/PDR.0b013e318186e609Scopus ID
2-s2.0-55849106647 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 137 CitationsAbstract
Zebrafish has many advantages as a model of human pediatric research. Given the physical and ethical problems with performing experiments on human patients, biomedical research has focused on using model organisms to study biologic processes conserved between humans and lower vertebrates. The most common model organisms are small mammals, usually rats and mice. Although these models have significant advantages, they are also expensive to maintain, difficult to manipulate embryonically, and limited for large-scale genetic studies. The zebrafish model nicely complements these deficiencies in mammalian experimental models. The low cost, small size, and external development of zebrafish make it an excellent model for vertebrate development biology. Techniques for large-scale genome mutagenesis and gene mapping, transgenesis, protein overexpression or knockdown, cell transplantation and chimeric embryo analysis, and chemical screens have immeasurably increased the power of this model organism. It is now possible to rapidly determine the developmental function of a gene of interest in vivo, and then identify genetic and chemical modifiers of the processes involved. Discoveries made in zebrafish can be further validated in mammals. With novel technologies being regularly developed, the zebrafish is poised to significantly improve our understanding of vertebrate development under normal and pathologic conditions.
Author List
Veldman MB, Lin SAuthor
Matthew B. Veldman PhD Assistant Professor in the Cell Biology, Neurobiology and Anatomy department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AnimalsAnimals, Genetically Modified
Biomedical Research
Cell Transplantation
Embryo, Nonmammalian
Gene Expression Profiling
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
Gene Knock-In Techniques
Gene Knockout Techniques
Genetic Testing
Genotype
Humans
In Situ Hybridization
Models, Animal
Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
Pediatrics
Phenotype
Zebrafish
