What types of research are commonly done with zebrafish?
• Features of the zebrafish strongly favor studying embryology and collecting and analyzing mutations and comparing them to other vertebrates. There are invertebrates that are equally or better suited for these types of studies, but they have very different anatomy patterns of development. These and other approaches allow a problem to be studied from many different experimental points of view, resulting in a better understanding of it. • There is now a large base of established knowledge on the developmental biology and genetics of the zebrafish. Many useful genetic techniques and staining reagents have been developed that allow mutations to be more easily found, studied, and mapped. • You can do genetic analysis. This means you can generate mutations, and identify genes required for a wide variety of biological processes. Genes direct synthesis of proteins, which do all the work in a cell. A mutation is a change of DNA that disrupts the resulting protein. Often, a defective protein wi
