Background/Vision
The Zebrafish Atlas was created to answer a community call for a comprehensive, web-based, anatomical and pathological atlas of the zebrafish, which has become one of the most widely used vertebrate animal models globally. The experimental strengths of zebrafish as a model system have made it useful for a wide range of investigations addressing the missions of the NIH and NSF.
In addition to the organism's small size, economical husbandry, rapid ex utero development, and prolific reproductive capacity, zebrafish as a model organism offers the following advantages:
- the utility of parthenogenetic methods of generating haploids, half-tetrads, or homozygous diploids (Streisinger, 1981)
- whole-mount in situ hybridization to determine RNA expression patterns in embryos (Jowett, 1999)
- a dense genetic map
- an expressed sequence tag (EST) database (WashU-Zebrafish Genome Resources EST Project: http://zfish.wustl.edu/)
- existence of hundreds of genetic mutants from large-scale mutagenesis experiments (Mullins et al., 1994; Driever et al. 1996; Haffter et al., 1996)
- genome sequence (Vogel, 2000)
- effective morpholino-based genetic knockdowns (Nasevicius and Ekker, 2000)
In support of this work, a readily-available digital registry of reference images in the form of standardized, integrated, web-based atlases was critical to fulfill a long-standing need in the zebrafish community.
As an important resource for zebrafish and aquatic models research communities, the vision for this atlas is to serve as web-based, interactive, comprehensive reference of normal zebrafish at many different stages of development, integrating histology and 3D anatomy over the life span of the organism. The atlas includes two-dimensional histology images derived from serially sectioned specimens as well as three-dimensional reconstructions and most recently (and experimentally), microCT scans. It is also intended to serve as a single resource for comparison with other imaging technologies, including OPT, MRI, and ultrasound, each of which has unique and important applications.
The Zebrafish Atlas provides reference slides for virtual microscopic viewing of the zebrafish using an Internet browser. Virtual slide technology allows the user to choose their own field of view and magnification, and to consult labeled histological sections of zebrafish. We are planning to include a complete set of embryos, larvae, juveniles, and adults from approximately 25 different ages. Future work will also include a variety of comparisons (e.g. normal vs. mutant, normal vs. diseased, multiple stages of development, zebrafish with other organisms, and different types of cancer).
