State-of-the-art zebrafish facility off to a great start

For Tiffany Klingström, it has been a busy time. But now that things are in place, the facility is in full swing.

“Overall, it has gone very well and smoothly. Initially, it was all about logistics and getting everything set up. Lately, there has been more focus on fine-tuning and optimising the environment to best support the research groups that are active here,” she explains.

Currently, close to ten research groups are utilising the facility for their studies. This means that the zebrafish facility is almost at full capacity.

“The size of the groups varies, and so does the number of groups we can accommodate. At the moment, I would estimate that we could perhaps accommodate one larger or three smaller groups before we are completely full. We have started looking ahead, exploring how we can expand operations as we see the continued rise in popularity of zebrafish,” Tiffany Klingström mentions.

“We notice that the demand is high and that, judging by the interest, we have created an attractive facility that is advantageous for Uppsala University.”

Several advantages of zebrafish

Zebrafish as experimental subjects offer several advantages. They have a short generation time, are easy to modify genetically, and are suitable for high-throughput studies.

“One significant, perhaps the most significant, advantage is that no animals need to be sacrificed to obtain single-cell embryos. As the embryos develop outside the females, we can also observe the live fish from fertilisation using various imaging methods,” Tiffany explains.

With the growth of AI as a tool in research, studies on zebrafish have also flourished.

“With researchers able to extract incredibly vast amounts of data from zebrafish studies, processing that data becomes a demanding task. Now, with AI, that problem is alleviated. Furthermore, there is also the opportunity to study most human diseases in the fish,” Tiffany elaborates.

This fact is evident at the facility at the Biomedical Centre (BMC).

“One of the most enjoyable aspects since the inauguration has been witnessing the research groups study a wide range of diseases, from cancer to heart conditions. Currently, most diseases and organ systems are being studied within the research conducted here.”

Research on the nervous system

One researcher utilising the new facility with his research group is Henrik Boije, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology.

“The new facility is state-of-the-art and greatly facilitates our research. We have been able to design special rooms with various functions, all housed within the facility’s walls, such as virus rooms, chemical rooms, and microscopy rooms. This allows us to centralise much of our research in one place. An advanced facility also serves as a magnet for recruiting new research groups working with zebrafish to the University,” he states.

In their research, Henrik and his team aim to understand how the nervous system forms and functions, and how activity in individual nerve cells is coordinated in networks to create specific behaviours. The primary goal is to comprehend how complex networks can generate different types of behaviours, aiding in understanding how the considerably more complex human brain operates. However, the research can also be used to understand symptoms of diseases or traumatic injuries affecting the spinal cord.

Why is the zebrafish suitable for this type of research?

“The main reasons we use zebrafish are its simpler nervous system, powerful genetic tools, and transparent larvae that develop outside the female. Fish have considerably simpler movement patterns than mammals, making the circuits less complex and movements more stereotypical. Zebrafish have been a popular model system for many decades, leading to a large amount of different transgenic lines freely shared among researchers. Finally, the fact that fish do not develop inside a uterus, but as transparent eggs, allows us to study the formation of the nervous system in real-time without affecting the embryo.”

Ethical and legal support

The zebrafish facility is an open facility where researchers themselves are largely “hands-on” with the fish. However, if a researcher has specific requests, Tiffany Klingström and her colleagues are there to support them.

“Researchers prefer to handle most aspects themselves. We ensure the fish are well cared for, that the automatic feeding operates correctly, and that the water quality is optimal. The support available to researchers primarily revolves around administrative matters concerning legislation, ethics, and permits during the setup and ongoing operations,” Tiffany adds.

Robin Widing