How can such a small fish help us better understand and therefore cure genetic diseases? The zebra fish (or zebra fish) is a species living in India but used in laboratories around the world by researchers working on genetic diseases. Two studies from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge published Wednesday in the British journal Nature, explain the interest in continuing research on zebrafish because, by isolating the genes associated with human diseases, the proportion of equivalent genes increases to 84%. Because of this similarity, researchers believe that studying genes in fish would significantly improve our knowledge of human biology. They therefore list all the genetic mutations observed in fish in a huge database accessible to the entire scientific body.
For example, myopathies The hereditary genetics responsible for muscular dystrophy are caused by a gene called dystrophin, also present in zebrafish and responsible for the same pathology. “The idea is to use a model organism like the zebrafish to try to see exactly what these genes do (…), go through every gene in the genome and see what a loss of function causes. in fish, “said Ross Kettleborough to AFP, a scientist who participated in the research.
