A facility in Sweden is dedicated to breeding zebrafish, a species used to study a variety of medical issues. Veuer’s Matt Hoffman has the story.
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00:00You're probably familiar with guinea pigs as a traditional experiment subject,
00:03but they're not the only animal used that way.
00:06This facility at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden breeds zebrafish.
00:10They're used in experiments to study all sorts of medical issues.
00:13News reports from just within the last month cite zebrafish as having been used
00:17in efforts to learn more about norovirus, fertility loss, and even anxiety.
00:22The zebrafish core facility's scientific director, Lars Brødegam,
00:25says the fish are useful because of their genetic makeup.
00:28If you mutate genes in zebrafish, the phenotype, how the zebrafish looks like,
00:33resembles very closely to patients that have the same mutations.
00:37And then people realized that the genetic environment of the zebrafish
00:42and the patients is the same.
00:43They also develop quickly and are transparent when young, which makes them easier to study.
00:48The facility provides the fish to its parent institute as well as external customers.
00:52And this practice may be spreading.
00:54In September, Oregon State University announced plans to modernize its own zebrafish laboratory.