Peter Alestrøm, Jethro Lee Holter, Rasoul Nourizadeh-Lillabadi, Tom Ask Inger Marie Haaland & Jan Roger Torp
Department of Basic Sciences and Aquatic
Medicine, Norwegian School of
Veterinary Science
Zebrafish (Danio
rerio) is increasingly used in basic biology and biomedicine and has a
number of characters that makes it a good choice as lab research model. It’s
small size, easy to breed, short generation interval, transparent embryo and
well characterized early development (Streisinger et al.1986; http://zfin.org) together with a fully sequenced
genome (1,560,480,686 bp and 22000 genes) allows project design and
success expectations which in many instances are much higher then would be
expected using most other species of fish. As a manifest of the increasing use
of the zebrafish model, a novel scientific journal named Zebrafish (www.liebertonline.com/loi/zeb) has
been devoted to this niche of experimental biology.
In our laboratory two major projects aims at
further refinement of the model (www.aquamedicine.no
-biochemistry): (1) Establishment of zebrafish ES cell cultures to allow
production of transgenic offspring based on targeted mutagenesis and (2)
development of targeting of vector DNA to improve DNA vaccine and other
therapeutic use of gene constructs. A third project area (3) concerns
monitoring in vivo effects of micro
gravity conditions and environmental toxins (xenobiotics) in zebrafish.
As part of our research we are in the position
of upgrading our zebrafish laboratory to meet the requirements of standards set
by AAALAC and other international bodies for certification and accreditation of
research animal units.
Acknowledgement: The research is supported by grants from
the Functional Genomics program (FUGE; www.fuge.no)
in the Research Council of Norway (RCN; NFR 159329/S10; NFR 142193/432) and the
European Space Agency (ESA-LS-99-MAP-LSS-003, www.pvi.uni-bonn.de/DEFAULT.HTM).