Our experiments indicate that enhancer detection using Sleeping Beauty transposons is an easily scalable and efficient experimental technique in zebrafish.
Morpholino oligonucleotides are the most commonly used, validated and accepted antisense technique in zebrafish [21], although other antisense technologies, such as peptide nucleic acid mimics (gripNAs) [22], are now gaining popularity.
Similarly, Exelixis, a firm based in South San Francisco, is validating targets using knockout techniques in mice, zebrafish, worms and fruitflies.Once the biology of a target has been nailed down, a drug must be found that fits the target precisely.
Although this technique was unsuccessful in zebrafish whole blood, in zebrafish kidney cell preparations forward and side scatter properties did separate cell populations (Figure 1) [31] [38], [39], [39], and thrombocytes comprised only 0.5% of total leucocytes [34], [53].
Several techniques have been developed in zebrafish to label single hematopoietic cells.
Complementing traditional forward-genetic screening approaches, reverse-genetic techniques have become easier in zebrafish with the description of TILLING, TALENs and CRISPR RNAs, and the growing list of existing zebrafish mutants, allowing researchers to rapidly interrogate specific host genes (Wienholds et al., 2003; Huang et al., 2011; Sander et al., 2011; Hwang et al., 2013).
Morpholinos have a known artifact that impacts lateral line migration, precluding their use, but CRISPR/ Cas9 has been shown to be a very effective technique for targeting genes in zebrafish (Hwang et al., 2013; Jao et al., 2013).
This paper is centered on developing new techniques for screening genetic mutants in zebrafish, especially those affecting development of motility in this interesting vertebrate animal.
In addition, effective transgenic techniques have been successfully employed in zebrafish, allowing the use of zebrafish in modeling various human cancer types (Liu and Leach, 2011).
We developed and standardized SSC transplantation techniques in male and female zebrafish, showing donor-derived spermatogenesis and male-derived oocytes, respectively, after transplantation.
