The most comprehensive atlas of genetic data on zebrafish, has been published.
The initiative, by the international DANIO-CODE consortium, a global team of 27 laboratories, including EARA member the Max Planck Institute, Germany, has been published in in Nature Genetics.
Ferenc Mueller, Professor of Developmental Genetics University of Birmingham, UK, who led the consortium, said: “The cataloguing of genetic information for zebrafish is a significant breakthrough that could underpin some of the most exciting medical and life sciences developments for years to come."
Zebrafish are used as a model in more than 1,200 laboratories worldwide for animal studies and the atlas will help researchers study conditions from various types of cancer (e.g. skin cancer), heart disease, and neurodegeneration and may help to replace mammal models in studies.
The team matched epigenomic data - a visualisation of the interaction between genes and the environment- of zebrafish and mice and predicted a correlation between these two animals.
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