Embryological Manipulations in Zebrafish

Due to the powerful combination of genetic and embryological techniques, the teleost fish Danio rerio has emerged in the last decade as an important model organism for the study of embryonic development. It is relatively easy to inject material such as mRNA or synthetic oligonucleotides to reduce or increase the expression of a gene product. Changes in gene expression can be analyzed at the level of mRNA, by whole-mount in situ hybridization, or at the level of protein, by immunofluorescence. It is also possible to quantitatively analyze protein levels by Western and immunoprecipitation. Cell behavior can be analyzed in detail by cell transplantation and by fate mapping. Because a large number of mutations have been identified in recent years, these methods can be applied in a variety of contexts to provide a deep understanding of gene function that is often more difficult to achieve in other vertebrate model systems.