The Eighthday - GFP Zebrafish

ZEBRAFISH

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a small freshwater fish that has recently become an important research animal for the study of embryo development. Zebrafish embryos are transparent and develops in the aquarium water instead of inside the mother. This allows for examination of developmental process without disturbing embryo development. The large and rapidly developing embryos can also be easily manipulated in vitro. The space and cost requirements of raising zebrafish are significantly less than for mice, which makes a random mutagenesis feasible and permits the identification and isolation of potentially all the genes required for a developmental or physiological process.

The zebrafish used in The Eighth Day project express GFP under the control of the beta-actin promoter element. This transgene is useful for transplant experiments, to visualize which cells have been transplanted. The transgenic line was generated by Ken Poss in Dr. Mark Keating’s laboratory. The beta-actin-GFP transgene was derived form a DNA construct originally made by Higashijima et al. (1997).

S. Higashijima, H. Okamoto, N. Ueno, Y. Hotta, and G. Eguchi. High-frequency generation of transgenic zebrafish which reliably express GFP in whole muscles or the whole body by using promoters of zebrafish origin. Developmental Biology 192, 289-299 (1997).
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