How can we obtain mutant stocks of zebrafish for our high school lab?
The easiest way to obtain your stock of fish would be to try the local pet stores. They should have normal looking wildtype fish and they may have some variants that you could use although it is unlikely they would have a true albino (no dark pigment and pink eyes). Your most likely choices would be: a) leopard, a recessive with spots instead of stripes; b) long fin, a dominant with long flowing fins (a common type of mutant in cultured tropical fish); and c) brass, a dark pigment-lacking fish except for its eyes which are dark. It is a recessive. You can often get long fin in combination with one of the other two mutants. There are also a bunch of other mutants that are infrequently seen in the pet stores. There are hundreds of them in labs, but most of them are embryonic lethals and several pigmentation mutants. I would not recommend using lab strains if you can avoid it because they are very inbred and less robust and viable.
