Increasing use of zebrafish in drug discovery and mechanistic toxicology demands knowledge of cytochrome P450 (CYP) gene regulation and function.
This rapidly increasing use of zebrafish as a model for human disease has necessarily generated interest in the anatomy of later developmental phases such as the larval, juvenile, and adult stages, during which many of the key aspects of organ morphogenesis and maturation take place.
Previous studies in zebrafish [27], [28] and chick [29], [30] have provided insight into normal vascular development, but have limited applicability to the sequence of vascular remodeling events in the mammalian embryo primarily due to differences in anatomy and the increased use of plexus bed intermediates in mammals compared to zebrafish.
Following these ground-breaking studies, there was evident increase in the use of zebrafish in research [17], resulting in the sequencing of its genome [18], extensive information on its genetics, genomics, phenotypic and developmental biology [19], and the establishment of thousands of wild-type and transgenic zebrafish lines [20,21].
There is also increasing interest in the use of zebrafish embryos and larvae as a model organism for toxicity testing, ecotoxicology screening, and disease modelling, with a particular focus on drug screening assays (e.g. see Berghmans et al., 2008 and Redfern et al., 2008).
Achieving a better understanding of genetic and epigenetic regulation in the zebrafish will increase the confidence regarding the use of zebrafish as a convenient model for human disease.
These findings increase the confidence in the use of zebrafish as a model for human cancer in addition to providing the first comprehensive mapping of DNA methylation in the normal adult zebrafish liver.
Increase use of social media.
Although the use of zebrafish in behavioral research is increasing rapidly, the full potential offered by its use in these studies still needs further elucidation.
The differences in effects of CCH between mammal and zebrafish may therefore be in part a result of the increased activity of zebrafish under CCH.
