Current State of Modeling Human Psychiatric Disorders Using Zebrafish

Abstract

Psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent brain pathologies that represent an urgent, unmet biomedical problem. Since reliable clinical diagnoses are essential for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, their animal models with robust, relevant behavioral and physiological endpoints become necessary. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) display well-defined, complex behaviors in major neurobehavioral domains which are evolutionarily conserved and strikingly parallel to those seen in rodents and humans. Although zebrafish are increasingly often used to model psychiatric disorders, there are also multiple challenges with such models as well. The field may therefore benefit from a balanced, disease-oriented discussion that considers the clinical prevalence, the pathological complexity, and societal importance of the disorders in question, and the extent of its detalization in zebrafish central nervous system (CNS) studies. Here, we critically discuss the use of zebrafish for modeling human psychiatric disorders in general, and highlight the topics for further in-depth consideration, in order to foster and (re)focus translational biological neuroscience research utilizing zebrafish. Recent developments in molecular biology research utilizing this model species have also been summarized here, collectively calling for a wider use of zebrafish in translational CNS disease modeling.

Zebrafish Feed Intake: A Systematic Review for Standardizing Feeding Management in Laboratory Conditions

“…Today, extensive molecular and genetic tools are available for zebrafish studies (also to model many human diseases) as they share similar genetic, endocrine, and physiological features to higher vertebrates [11]. Indeed, the zebrafish shares 70% of its genome and over 80% of disease-related proteins with humans [12] and has been used for studying the causal mechanisms of many human diseases as well as for finding new preventive and curative treatments [9,[12][13][14]. More than 10,000 researchers [15], belonging to 1595 labs and from 31 countries around the world [16], use zebrafish as animal models.…”