Animal experiment: studying zebrafish reveals the mystery of organ regeneration

  The zebrafish is about 4 cm long and has dark blue and silver vertical stripes. The gene is 87% similar to humans, and the heart can regenerate about 2000 human diseases. Embryos develop in vitro and are completely transparent, zebrafish pairs can produce 300 "small fish"

  "The genetic content of zebrafish genes is 87% of that of humans, although humans cannot grow a second heart. The zebrafish heart can regenerate." National Major Scientific Research Project, National Zebrafish Resource Center, "Heart and Liver Development and Regeneration Genetics "Regulation Research" has recently completed a mid-term summary. Scientists hope to uncover the mystery of organ regeneration by studying zebrafish.

  The reporter visited the National Zebrafish Resource Center of the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In a laboratory of approximately 250 square meters, 50,000 zebrafish move back and forth in the breeding container. Researchers sometimes feed them and record relevant data.

  With the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Zebrafish Resource Center was established and settled in Wuhan in October last year. The director of the center Sun Yonghua said that zebrafish are tropical fish and their origin is not in China. Due to the close relationship between zebrafish and human genes, it can cause approximately 2,000 human diseases, including colds, leukemia, atherosclerosis and cancer. Therefore, if you want to develop a drug to treat the above diseases, you can test its effect on zebrafish first.

  Currently, there are more than 1,500 laboratories studying zebrafish around the world, and there are nearly 100 zebrafish laboratories in China.

  In the past year, it is understood that the center has collected and created a collection of more than 100 zebrafish gene variants, and provided services to zebrafish researchers across the country. The center is expected to become the world's second largest zebrafish resource center within two years.

  "Zebrafish are very popular among scientists because they are economical laboratory animals." According to reports, unlike the famous laboratory animal mice, zebrafish embryos develop in vitro and in vitro. Fully transparent scientists can easily observe the development of embryos. A pair of zebrafish can produce 300 "fish babies" at a time, which meets many operational requirements of the experiment. In addition, one day of zebrafish embryo development is equivalent to 21 days of human embryo development in the mother, thus saving experimental time.