Zebrafish@@http://images.gizmag.com/hero/zebrafish.jpg@@ and humans have more in common than some might think.
Like humans, the small, striped fish are vertebrates, meaning they have a backbone. They also have a spinal cord, a brain and a nervous system. Most vertebrates go through a similar embryonic development, which allows scientists studying zebrafish to better understand human development.
University biologist George Streisinger@@http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/k12/george_streisinger.html@@ pioneered zebrafish research while studying genetics and embryonic development in the 1970s. The fish have since become popular among scientists worldwide and have also become a research priority for the National Institutes of Health@@http://www.nih.gov/@@.
Although the zebrafish facilities are internationally known, few students know about them.
University senior Len Swanson@@he’s on the directory as “Leonard” http://www.facebook.com/len.swanson@@ has worked at the research facility in the basement of Klamath Hall for about two years.@@http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/architecture/oregon/klamath.html@@
“I’d say about 30 to 40 percent of students know about it,” @@I honestly doubt that@@Swanson said. “When I tell people I work at the zebrafish research center, very few people know where that is.”
Despite the zebrafish’s lack of popularity among students on campus, Director of the the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) Zoltan Varga called the University an international “hub” for zebrafish research.@@http://zfin.org/cgi-bin/webdriver?MIval=aa-persview.apg&OID=ZDB-PERS-970217-6@@
“There’s a really broad range of biomedical research going on these days, from cancer research to degenerative disease to drug screening and drug testing,” Varga said.
The center distributes the fish to researchers and universities all over the world, holding about 50,000 fish each year to distribute. Varga said it also houses the world’s largest collection of lines, meaning zebrafish with certain genetic mutations.
Because zebrafish undergo similar embryonic development, Varga said scientists can look at the genes in zebrafish that make muscles, eyes, ears and the brain, and they can mutate these genes to understand how the mutation affects biological developments. This can help scientists make predictions for treatment in humans with similar mutations.
The University has six labs in the Institute of Neuroscience and the Institute of Molecular Biology@@http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/@@ that use zebrafish as its primary research tool.
University senior Renee Arias@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Renee+Arias@@ is a researcher in the Washbourne Lab@@http://www.neuro.uoregon.edu/washbourne/@@. She’s been researching memory in zebrafish with mutated genes that can lead to autism, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases in humans. She said the fish are great for research because their eggs are clear and grow outside the mother’s body, allowing researchers to track development.
Varga said zebrafish research has made big strides in the last decade. Already about 80 percent of the zebrafish genome is mapped, and most is sequenced. Sequencing the genome would allow scientists to know what effect each gene has on biological development when the gene is mutated. Varga said the research community hopes to have the entire genome sequenced in the next five to 10 years.
“We can really make a difference in terms of better understanding biomedical questions and understanding human conditions,” Varga said. “That in itself is tremendous.”