The glass fish - Zebrafish research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

Description: The glass fish - Zebrafish research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental BiologyResearch Field: Developmental and Evolutionary Biology/GeneticsRecently, the zebrafish (lat. Danio rerio), originally native to India, has become one of the key model organisms in biomedical research. Equipped with modern analysis equipment, 7,000 aquariums and as many as 400,000 zebrafish, scientists in the team of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen are pursuing the question of how genes control an organism’s development.Zebrafish are easy to keep and they grow with amazing speed. Within twenty-four hours after fertilization of the egg cell, all of its organs are already formed; after only five days, a small fish emerges, able to search for its own food. The zebrafish is transparent in the initial stages of its development which offers an enormous advantage for the scientists: it allows them to study all processes directly on a living fish.Discoveries made using a zebrafish model can therefore be used to draw conclusions regarding human diseases. Accordingly, zebrafish research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen provides the foundation for developing new strategies to fight diseases, such as Parkinson’s or cancer.Copyright: © Max-Planck-GesellschaftPublished at ScienceStage.com in cooperation with the Max Planck Society.Involved Institutes: Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology