What is special about zebrafish

Native to south asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio [2] (and thus often called a tropical fish although both tropical and subtropical ).That's because there's a basic challenge scientists have to overcome when doing research on human diseases.The scientific name of zebrafish is danio rerio and it belongs to the minnow family, cyprinidae.Zebrafish has a closed cardiovascular system and a cardiac cycle that is highly reminiscent of human cardiovascular physiology.Zebrafish wallpapers download free zebrafish wallpapers, click on the image to open the large version.

They can repair damaged heart muscle after various types of heart injury.It came into awareness in the scientific community, at least for geneticists, roughly around 1981 when the late george streisinger, looking for a new genetic organism to study, picked up a couple of zebrafish at the local pet store and started to do a few experiments with them.Mice and humans are a closer genetic match, at about 85 percent.The fish got its common name from the presence of five uniform and pigmented horizontal stripes on the side of its body, that resemble the stripes of a zebra.According to a 2013 study by british researchers, 82 percent of genes associated with human diseases and disorders have a zebrafish counterpart.

As omnivorous organisms, they feed on a range of organisms such as insects, worms and zooplankton as well as various plant matter in their environment.They have two eyes, a brain, a heart, a pancreas, kidneys, and a liver.The name zebrafish comes from the horizontal blue stripes on each side of their bodies.The zebrafish embryos with the disrupted genes have structural and functional defects that mimic the.Zebrafish, so named due to their stripes, prefer to live in large groups called shoals.

Due to the conservation of cell biological and developmental processes across all vertebrates, studies in fish can give great insight into human disease processes.