HYDERABAD: These are one of the most commonly found fish in the local lakes of Hyderabad. Called as ‘chintaaku pariga’ in Telugu, they are just like any other fresh water fish and popular too as an aquarium fish.But what many do not know is that this Zebrafish shares almost all the genes with human beings in a DNA sequence, thus making it an almost perfect vertebrate model organism for laboratory purposes. Experiments on the fish have proved to be very effective and efficient in studying the possible effects of any drug on human beings. From embryos to the 1.5-inch long adult fish, these are used in research relating to various diseases including cancer, diabetes etc and drug development for the same.These small transparent fish with stripes are very useful when it comes to drug development, acknowledges Dr Kiranam Chatti, a senior research scientist at the Institute of Life Sciences, Hyderabad. According to him, Zebrafish embryos are living organisms with several of the organs and processes present in humans.The embryos are small, transparent, and available in large numbers, which provides the added advantage over other animal models like rats, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, and dogs, for studying the safety and effectiveness of drugs.Zebrafish embryos are treated with drugs and their effects on organ functions and development can be observed under a microscope.Dr Pushkar Kulkarni, an ILS scientist, has established sophisticated technology to obtain electrocardiograms (ECG) from Zebrafish to study and evaluate cardiovascular effects of drugs. “A major advantage with Zebrafish is that testing of a large number of drugs can be performed early in the process, so that risky drug candidates can be identified and rejected early and only effective ones are used for further studies,” says Dr Chatti.Zebrafish in Dr Chatti’s labs are also genetically altered to create ‘disease models’, which imitate human diseases like cancer, diabetes and inflammation, and thus help us better understand diseases as well as develop therapies.So how easy or difficult is it to maintain one such lab? According to Dr Chatti, it is quite simple and easy to maintain.“We have a custom-made recirculation system with several interconnected tanks and a water pump so that the water does not remain static. The fish are provided with high quality live brine shrimp as food, and allowed to breed while the fertilized eggs are collected separately,” explains Dr Chatti. He says many interesting aspects of embryogenesis can be observed within the first five days of development- from the time the eggs are fertilized to the time when small fish begin to feed by themselves. “For the purpose of pharmacology, embryos up to a week old can be used to study the effects of drugs, apart from adult fish,” points out Dr Chatti.The Institute of Life Sciences in Hyderabad is one of the very few institutes in India which use Zebrafish for research in pharmacology and drug development.The institute also lets its researchers establish their own companies a few little known facts* Zebrafish shares almost all the genes with human beings in a DNA sequence, thus making it an almost perfect vertebrate model organism for laboratory purposes * A major advantage with Zebrafish is that testing of a large number of drugs can be performed early in the process, so that risky drug candidates can be identified and rejected early and only effective ones are used for further studies * Institute of Life Sciences in Hyderabad is one of the very few institutes in India which use Zebrafish for research
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