Zebrafish Research at UCL

Jason Rihel brings zebrafish sleep research to UCL

UCL are excited to announce the arrival of a new research group – the Rihel Lab.
They study the genes and neuronal circuits that regulate sleep in zebrafish.

See their page for full details

Steve Wilson Group win 2 awards at the Wellcome Image Awards 2011!

Two zebrafish images from the Wilson Lab were recently honored at the 2011 Wellcome Image Awards.

The Wellcome image collection is an extensive resource, containing thousands of science-related images. Every year, a small subset of recently acquired images are chosen by a panel of judges as the most scientifically informative, technically excellent, and aesthetically striking images. This group of twenty award-winning images – containing two striking micrographs from the Wilson lab – is on display at the Wellcome Collection until the 10^th of July 2011. They can also be viewed and downloaded from the Wellcome Image Collection Website.

Monica Folgueira recently captured this confocal micrograph of a 5 day old cavefish embryo that highlights some of the inner-workings of the fish nervous system. The embryo has been stained with an antibody against a calcium-binding protein (calretinin, in green) to show different neuronal types and their processes in the nervous system, and with an antibody against a component of tight junctions (zona occludens- 1, in red). Although the eyes are very evident at this stage, they will not develop any further. The image also shows an special character of fish: the presence of taste buds outside the oral cavity, around the lips and along the body.

This photomicrograph, captured by Kara Cerveny, shows a lateral image of a 3 day old zebrafish retina from the eye of a three-day-old zebrafish (Danio rerio). Using double in situ hybridisation, the undifferentiated retinal stem cells have been highlighted in red while the retinal progenitor cells that are beginning to differentiate are highlighted in purple. The kaleidoscope-like effect is created by the elongated neuroepithelial cells radiating from the undifferentiated region closest to the lens towards the differentiated cells deeper in the retina. This image depicts the whole eye and was created by reflecting half the image across its origin.

See Wellcome website for more info

Zebrafish in music

We’ve all heard that scientists are working in laboratories around the world, experimenting and solving problems, but what exactly are scientists doing on a daily basis? Our lab was one of six UCL biomedical science labs that helped Wellcome Trust sponsored artist, Gethan Dick, discover what it’s like to be a research scientist. This cooperative project produced an album of six songs – all truthful, poetic representations of different types of research ranging from basic developmental neurobiology to clinical studies using functional MRI.

Hear about our research on eye development by listening to Fish Eye/Fix Me, the track composed by Gethan Dick and Hannah Marshall in collaboration with Wilson lab post-doctoral fellow, Kara Cerveny. You can check out all of the songs on the album Trying and Trying and Trying.

Kara says, “Gethan captured the essence of my lab work, right down to the way I hold my breath when moving cells from one embryo into another. In the past, I have often found that words are no substitute for actually showing someone what it means to pipette, to transplant cells, to look through a microscope, to cut frozen sections. With this track, Gethan has used words to paint pictures of these exact things. Fish Eye/Fix Me is an evocative, haunting, and truthful piece about the life of a developmental biologist, investigating the environmental signals that override mutations and rescue sick cells from their intrinsic cell death program.”

Link to the song and the album.

New Paper on Retinal Stem Cells, Proliferation and Cancer

Nearly 40 years after US President Richard Nixon declared ‘war on cancer’, researchers around the world are still trying to understand how tumors form and grow. New insight into how cells can be prevented from becoming cancerous is found in an unlikely place – the eyes of zebrafish.

Zebrafish are small striped fish commonly sold in pet stores, and are valued for their hardy nature. For scientists, zebrafish are model organisms that can be used to reveal new clues about all things biological including brain organization, immunology, cancer, and developmental diseases.

Zebrafish eyes, like the rest of their bodies, grow continuously. Each eye grows in a very controlled pattern — new cells are added from a specialized region that encircles the edge of the camera-like part of the eye that senses light (the retina). In this way, the eye grows much like a tree, adding annular rings of new cells that must integrate into the existing tissue. Your eyes are different. They are the same size from the day you’re born until the day you die.

See full details on our publication summary page.

An interview with Steve Wilson

Stephen Wilson was recently awarded the Remedios Caro Almela Prize for Research in Developmental Neurobiology. Steve was interviewed to find out about how he started on the road to developmental biology research, how he got interested in the brain, his achievements and future challenges.

See full interview here.

Three new papers reveal how the eye takes shape

The complex choreography of eye formation
Florencia Cavodeassi and Stephen Wilson
October 2009

A gene and a population of cells important for shaping the eye
Gaia Gestri and Steve Wilson
October 2009

A zebrafish model for branchio-oculo-facial syndrome – a condition affecting eye formation
Gaia Gestri and Stephen Wilson
October 2009

Steve Wilson wins the Remedios Caro Almela Prize for research in Developmental Neurobiology

The jury which will award the Remedios Caro Almela Prize IV research in Developmental Neurobiology decided this year to award the prize, worth 18,000 euros, the researcher Stephen Wilson of University College London. This prize is powered by the Chair ‘Remedios Caro Almela’ Miguel Hernandez University (UMH), Elche, attached to the Institute of Neurosciences, joint center of the UMH and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).
See website for google translated page

A zebrafish model of the human Oral-facial-digital syndrome

Oral-facial-digital syndrome type 1 (OFD1) is a severe condition that occurs in 1:50,000-250,000 live births. The disease is caused by a defect in a gene called ofd1 that is carried on the X chromosome. We know that Ofd1 protein has a crucial role in development, because XY males inheriting the mutation have no Ofd1 and die before birth, whereas heterozygous XX females (who carry one mutant and one working copy of the gene) are born with several congenital defects: malformation of the face and mouth, abnormalities of the digits and malformation of the central nervous system. OFD1 syndrome often features polycystic kidneys, which is the main cause of death among patients and that can only be treated effectively by kidney transplant. Ofd genes are present in all vertebrate animals and this means that one can potentially model the disease in animals in which it is easier to study why developmental events go wrong than it is in humans. In this study, we elucidated the function of ofd1 during development by depleting Ofd1 protein during zebrafish embryogenesis, using morpholino (Mo) antisense reagents that inhibit the activity of the gene.

See publication summary for full details.