Articles tagged Zebrafish
(14 results)

We’re taking time to get to know the members of the GSA’s Early Career Scientist Committees. Join us to learn more about our early career scientist advocates. Anna Moyer Accessibility Subcommittee University of Alabama at Birmingham Research Interest: I don’t remember very much about the birth of my little brother. I remember the way the light…

Guest post by Jennifer Tsang. Years ago, Sarah Edie and Norann Zaghloul pored over 50,000 zebrafish embryos, examining them for developmental phenotypes. They had previously injected each of these embryos with a plasmid expressing a gene from chromosome 21. Their goal was to understand how overexpression of specific genes on chromosome 21 affected early development1.…

A Wnt protein involved in the formation of the human ovary plays an important role in female zebrafish sex development.    Even though zebrafish are a well-studied research model, how these fish develop into males or females remains rather obscure—in part because the sex of lab strains is not determined by sex chromosomes. Research published…

Yeast and zebrafish are among the lab organisms being recruited to the search for rare disease cures. Rare diseases are not so rare. About 300 million people worldwide live with the more than 7000 individual diseases that are designated “rare” by the US government. But because each of these affect so few individuals, the usual…

The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to announce that Steven Farber and Jamie Shuda are the recipients of the 2018 Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education for their extraordinary contributions to genetics education. Farber is a principal investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Shuda is Director of Life Science…

The prolonged and severe seizures suffered by those with pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy (PDE) can lead to brain dysfunction and death if not treated. Standard antiepileptic drugs are typically ineffective for people with this rare genetic disorder—instead, they need high doses of vitamin B6 in the form of pyridoxine or pyridoxal 5′-phosphate. But even with this supplementation,…

Model Organism Databases (MODs) and the Gene Ontology Consortium play a crucial “behind-the-scenes” role in the work of model organism geneticists and many other biomedical researchers. This guest post by the newly-formed Alliance of Genome Resources announces the group’s intention to integrate the efforts of the MODs and other genome resources. You can learn more…

  The first plenary talk at the fast approaching Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC) will be given by Leonard Zon.  His talk is certain to provide an exciting start to the joint meeting sessions. Zon is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine at Harvard, Director of the Stem Cell Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an…

  A radio ad for the seafood restaurant chain Legal Sea Foods highlights the importance of zebrafish. The restaurant’s CEO, Roger Berkowitz, calls the zebrafish his favorite fish because, “unlike the lazy boring perch, you’re important in genetic research.” The ad goes on to highlight the work of zebrafish researcher Dr. Leonard Zon at Boston…

Since the 17th century, the tiny medaka fish that dart through rice paddies in Japan have been bred as living ornaments. Though in the wild they are a nondescript mud color, medaka occasionally turn up in flashier mutant varieties — orange-red, pearlescent white, black splotched — that were much prized by generations of fish fanciers.…

Laboratory zebrafish hide a dirty little secret. Although the tiny fish have proven to be a vital model of vertebrate development and disease genetics, zebrafish reproduction—at least in the lab—has wildly variable outcomes. Offspring sex ratios can vary from extremely male-biased to extremely female-biased, depending on which breeding pairs serve as parents. The reason for…