Zebrafish as a genetic model organism

The study of zebrafish as a leading model organism for developmental biology is rapidly expanding. The growing interest in zebrafish research was paralleled by an increase in tools and methods available to study this fish. While research initially focused on forward genetics approaches (mutagenesis screens), in recent years the reverse genetics methods have been developed considerably (RNA interference, morpholino knock-down, TILLING). The increase in zebrafish genomic resources together with more sophisticated protocols for transgenesis and other tools referred above have contributed not only to unravel the genetic networks controlling development, but also generate zebrafish disease models with application in human biomedicine. In addition, zebrafish are increasingly used as a genetic model organism for aquaculture species and in toxicogenomics. As we describe here, this diminute fish is a versatile model organism for many fields of research.