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In this Perspective, the authors highlight the importance of understanding the background genetics of the zebrafish, Danio rerio, and suggest ways that the field might better report genetic information and maintain breeding colonies to improve the transparency and reproducibility of zebrafish research.
To achieve knockdown rather than knockout of particular genes, a new paper demonstrates a CRISPR/Cas13 method that can efficiently edit mRNA in zebrafish, medaka, killifish, and mouse embryos.
Cortico-striatal circuits are at the heart of many brain disorders, which means they are often studied using neurobiological animal models. A new study uses resting-state functional connectivity to assess homologies of cortico-striatal circuits in mice, monkeys, and humans.
This Review discusses the strengths of the zebrafish model for microbiome research, and highlights important insights gleaned from observational and manipulative microbiome studies in zebrafish.
Caged neurotransmitters are widely used to study neurobiological processes such as synaptic transmission and plasticity. However, uncaging has been primarily restricted to in vitro and ex vivo experimental systems. Using caged neurotransmitters in vivo has posed a huge hurdle because photoactivatable cages bind to GABA-A receptors, acting as competitive antagonists towards GABA. This reduced inhibition leads to epileptiform-like activity, which can cause problems for circuit level studies in vivo. To circumvent this off-target effect, a recent publication introduces a new caged glutamate: G5-MNI-glutamate. Using a novel technique called ‘cloaking,’ GABA-A receptor antagonism is abolished, opening up new possibilities for future in vivo studies with caged neurotransmitters.
Vasculature has an essential role both in central nervous system health and diseases. A new optimized imaging and analysis pipeline helps to characterize blood vessel network topology and plasticity across large regions in detail.
Human cancer is a disease of cooperating genetic events that is complex to model in vivo. A new study combines somatic base editing with a mouse model of breast cancer, demonstrating the potential to rapidly investigate the function of disease-specific point mutations.
Microglia play important but incompletely understood roles in the pathogenesis of neurological disease. New chimeric models using transplanted human stem cell-derived microglia-like cells hold great promise to better model the unique function of human microglia in brain disease.