COED Presents: Fun with Genetics!
February 13, 2008 by COED Staff
Filed under News-ish
The next level of genetic engineering is upon us. In a not-so-groundbreaking anouncement, researchers at the Children’s Hospital in Boston bred zebrafish with transparent bodies in a bid to better understand how diseases spread. Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans in many ways. Scientists hope the see-through fish will help them identify what triggers certain cancers to metastasize.
The transparent fish, described in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, are allowing researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston to directly view fish’s internal organs and observe processes such as tumor growth in real-time in living organisms.
Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans in many ways and serve as good models for human biology and disease. Traditionally, researchers have relied on information collected after the diseased animal died to infer anything about human ailments. But for rapidly changing processes such as cancer, this snapshot method is bound to miss something. “It’s like taking a photograph when you need a video,” said White, also an instructor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
