Zebrafish as a model organism – can a fish mimic human?

Subhiksha Subramanian

doi:10.1515/jbcpp-2021-0113

Article

Zebrafish as a model organism – can a fish mimic human?

Published/Copyright: October 18, 2021

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From the journal Journal of Basic and Clinical Physiology and Pharmacology Volume 34 Issue 5

Abstract

From pre-historic era, all scientific discoveries have evolved around a concept – THINK BIG but for a change zebrafish as a model organism in research had managed to halt the entire medical community and made us realize that it’s time to think small. From a barely imagined being in research few years ago to around 4,000 publications in just last year, zebrafish has definitely come a long way. Through these tiny fish, scientists have managed to find genes that caused human diseases and have also developed various specific models to know more about the pathology behind such diseases. This review will focus on zebrafish as a model organism from the time it was introduced to the most novel targets with particular emphasis on central nervous system (CNS) as it is rapidly evolving branch in zebrafish research these days. This review will try to shed light on the early stages of zebrafish as a model organism and will try to cover the journey of it developing as a successful model organism to map many diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s and autism describing the rationale for using this specific model and briefly the techniques under each category and finally will summarize the pros and cons of the model with its expected future directions.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; cancer model; infection; regeneration; toxicity testing; zebrafish

Corresponding author: Dr. Subhiksha Subramanian, Department of Pharmacology, JIPMER, 3rd Floor, Institute Block, Puducherry 605 006, India, Phone: +91 9566242439, E-mail: subhiksha_subramanian@yahoo.com

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Ranjan and Mr. Sanjay from JIPMER, Puducherry for helping me with the manuscript.

Research funding : None declared.
Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
Competing interests: Author states no conflict of interest.
Informed consent: Not applicable.
Ethical approval: Not applicable.

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Received: 2021-04-20

Accepted: 2021-08-20

Published Online: 2021-10-18

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jbcpp-2021-0113

Keywords for this article

Alzheimer’s disease; cancer model; infection; regeneration; toxicity testing; zebrafish