Zebrafish
This core has been established to allow all NCCU scientists the opportunity to extend their research projects to zebrafish, in order to better understand the function of their genes of interest. Zebrafish offer unique advantages for the study of human development and disease. As a vertebrate developmental model, zebrafish offers several advantages over rodent models, such as small genome size, short generation time (embryogenesis), external development allowing embryo manipulation, and optical transparency of embryos. The large-scale production of zebrafish embryos is also a great advantage over rodent models, as orders of magnitude greater embryos can be produced from transgenic founders. The similarity in zebrafish and human genomes and conservation of gene function between zebrafish and human, combined with the experimental advantages of zebrafish, make zebrafish an extremely attractive model system for the development of human disease models and for high through-put chemical modifier (i.e., drug, natural products, environmental toxicant) screening.
The Zebrafish Core is located in the BBRI, and consists of zebrafish housing systems that house wild-type, mutant, and transgenic zebrafish lines. Technical service is available to provide assistance to NCCU investigators interested in extending their research programs to zebrafish. The zebrafish core contains two microinjection stations for microinjection of zebrafish embryos, with expansion to a third microinjection station planned soon. The core also contains an Olympus MVX10 Macro Zoom System microscope equipped with epifluorescence, and a Nikon SMZ1500 stereomicroscope equipped with epifluorescence.