A Zebrafish Can’t Change Its Stripes … Or Can It?

By Leonard Ho

Click through to see the images.

Researchers have determined it’s a certain gene that keeps pigment cells dispersed and gives the pearl danio its uniform orange color. By expressing this gene the same way in zebrafish, the zebrafish pigment cells also remained intermingled and the fish were essentially stripped of their stripes. Credit: D Parichy Lab/U of Washington

From the University of Washington

Zebrafish Stripped of Stripes

Within weeks of publishing surprising new insights about how zebrafish get their stripes, the same University of Washington group is now able to explain how to “erase” them.

The findings – the first published Aug. 28 in Science and the latest in the Nov. 6 issue of Nature Communications – give new understanding about genes and cell behaviors that underlie pigment patterns in zebrafish that, in turn, could help unravel the workings of pigment cells in humans and other animals, skin disorders such as melanoma and cell regeneration.

“Using zebrafish as a model, we’re at the point where we have a lot of the basic mechanisms, the basic phenomenology of what’s going on, so we can start to look at some of these other …read more

Read more here: Advanced Aquarist