• Question: Why did you choose a zebra fish

    Asked by ellseybellsey to Juan on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Juan Carlos Lopez-Baez

      Juan Carlos Lopez-Baez answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Hi Ellseybellsey

      I choose zebrafish because of their amazing capacity to regenerate their tissues. They are also very good fun to work with and you can image them very well, as they are transparent when they are small and they develop very fast, so you can actually see in real time how they form their organs.

      If you want, look at this movie and you will be able to see how fast they develop in just 20 hours. They go from being just one cell to a little larva with thousands of cells in that time.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moL5C8SjeJU

      Don’t worry about what she says, as it is complicated, but it does point out how the tail and the eye form in the little fish. The video starts when the zebrafish are just 2 cells and from there they multiply many many times.

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