The zebrafish is a powerful genetic model organism. In recent years, zebrafish has been increasingly used to model human diseases. Due to a number of recent technological advancements, the genetic tool box is now also stocked with sophisticated transgenic and reverse genetic tools. Here, we focus on both commonly used and recently established reverse genetic and transgenic tools available in ze...

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has been widely utilised for the study of developmental biology, which has lead to the evolution of sophisticated cellular and molecular approaches. More recently, the rapid progress of various zebrafish genomic infrastructure initiatives is facilitating the development of zebrafish models of human disease. This review aims to describe several representative examples...

Optokinetic response (OKR) is a behavior that an animal vibrates its eyes to follow a rotating grating around it. It has been widely used to assess the visual functions of larval zebrafish. Nevertheless, the standard protocol for larval fish is not yet readily applicable in adult zebrafish. Here, we introduce how to measure the OKR of adult zebrafish with our simple custom-built apparatus using...

Less than five years ago, the zebrafish swam into the limelight as a model genetic organism, with the description of hundreds of mutant phenotypes from screens in Boston and Tübingen (Development 123, 1996). Since that time, much of the zebrafish research community has focussed on identifying the chemically-induced mutations responsible for these phenotypes and on improving zebrafish genomic to...

Zebrafish is an emerging vertebrate model organism to study human diseases and toxicology [1]. A variety of genetic tools in zebrafish allow in vivo modeling of human genetic diseases and regeneration [2]. Zebrafish larvae also have small size and optical clarity which allows easy microscopic evaluation of physiological changes and morphological phenotypes. Conventional imaging approaches invol...

The zebrafish, Danio rerio, has emerged as a major model organism for biomedical research, yet little is known about its natural history. We review the literature pertaining to the geographic range, biotic and abiotic habitats, and life cycle of the zebrafish. We also report our own field study to document several aspects of zebrafish natural history across sites in northeast India. We found ze...

Adult zebrafish are robustly social animals whereas larva is not. We designed an assay to determine at what stage of development zebrafish begin to interact with and prefer other fish. One week old zebrafish do not show significant social preference whereas most 3 weeks old zebrafish strongly prefer to remain in a compartment where they can view conspecifics. However, for some individuals, the ...

Understanding how vertebrates respond to hypoxia can have important clinical implications. Fish have evolved the ability to survive long exposure to low oxygen levels. However, little is known about the specific changes in gene expression that result from hypoxia. In this study we used a zebrafish cDNA microarray to examine the expression of >4,500 genes in zebrafish embryos exposed to 24 h of ...

Zebrafish (Danio rerio), largely used as a model for studying developmental processes, has also emerged as a valuable system for modelling human inflammatory diseases. However, in a context where even mice have been questioned as a valid model for these analysis, a systematic study evaluating the reproducibility of human and mammalian inflammatory diseases in zebrafish is still lacking. In this...

Zebrafish embryos have been extensively used to study heart development and cardiac function, mainly due to the unique embryology and genetics of this model organism. Since most human heart disease occurs during adulthood, adult zebrafish models of heart disease are being created to dissect mechanisms of the disease and discover novel therapies. However, due to its small heart size, the use of ...