“We were very surprised to find, that for many categories of proteins, sharks share more similarities with humans than zebrafish,” he said. MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Surprising similarities between human and zebrafish tumors. The zebrafish is similar to humans anatomically and genetically. Zebrafish models of human genetic disease. After testing various different receptors that might be involved in the reduced drug sensitivity, the researchers found that only one receptor was implicated - the serotonin receptor 5HT 1AA. Even better for disease research is that around 85% of the genes which are known to cause disease in humans are conserved in zebrafish. “To realize the benefits the zebrafish can make to human health, we need to understand the genome in its entirety – both the similarities to the human … In fact, many of these DNA changes led to differences between human and chimp appearance and behavior. Hopkins and her colleagues found that a gene called met, which is known to cause cancer, sits on a chromosome found in excess in zebrafish tumors.,Other researchers had previously observed met on a chromosome found in extra numbers in human cancer. This trait, known as aneuploidy, appears to give tumor cells a survival edge. Humans and zebrafish have proteins that are 82 percent alike — this is important because it indicates that zebrafish are suitable in studies that compare results to potential treatments for diseases in humans. Connecting zebrafish phenogenetic biology to that of humans and other vertebrates, however, requires the proper assignment of gene orthologies. More about MIT News at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, View all news coverage of MIT in the media, Video: "Zebrafish and Cancer: What's the Connection? According to a paper published in Nature, 70 per cent of protein-coding human genes are related to genes found in the zebrafish (Danio rerio), and … If gene sequences match up between the two species with high similarity it is called “gene conservation”. Zebrafish offers significant opportunities for the investigation of vertebrate development, evolution, physiology, and behavior and provides numerous models of human disease. Because many human genes were present in at least one T-ALL CNA, the significance of this concordance is diminished. In keeping with the striking anatomical and physiological similarity between fish and mammals, zebrafish develop a wide spectrum of cancers resembling human malignancies. Understanding the relationship between zebrafish genes and mutations with those of humans will require understanding the syntenic correspondence between the zebrafish and human genomes. Thus, we focused on genes recurrently altered in both D. rerio and human T-ALL. Shox2 gene and human SHOX gene through a comparative transgenic analysis, and these results are consistent with those of Clark et al.15 and Kvon et al.16 Zebrafish has been increasingly used as an animal model for cardiovascular research. When tested with the startle reaction, the mutant fish showed decreased sensitivity to the drug. More than half of our genetic code is the same as a banana's New finding that tumor cells in both species have too many chromosomes could help pinpoint genes that drive cancer development. While zebrafish have been used extensively in genetic research, they've been used only in developmental models, such as identifying genes associated with disease, rather than to predict genes involved in a complex cognitive behavior such as smoking. 895 Words 4 Pages. As humans and chimps gradually evolved from a common ancestor, their DNA, passed from generation to generation, changed too. In a study published in eLife journal, the researchers tested families of genetically altered zebrafish for nicotine preference. In humans, this same cell forms a scar. (A) Real-time PCR quantification of mRNA transcripts of mpv17-like2 and mpv17-like at 6 dpf (n=9). Easier to house and care for than rodents. This is why zebrafish offer a useful model for studying this phenomenon. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a freshwater fish belonging to the minnow family of the order Cypriniformes.Native to South Asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio (and thus often called a "tropical fish" although both tropical and subtropical).. An international team of researchers, writing in the journal Nature, has shown exactly how our genes line up with those of this amazing fish. 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