Canadian resource center for zebrafish genetics

The zebrafish has become one of the most widely used species for the study of vertebrate development due to its characteristics that facilitate embryological analyses and the fact that large-scale genetic approaches are possible. The number of Canadian investigators using zebrafish has grown rapidly over the last few years. This increase created the need for a centralized resource center. We propose to establish a resource center that will serve the entire Canadian community of investigators using zebrafish. Some activities of the center will take place at the University of Ottawa and others at the University of Alberta. The many benefits from such a resource center for the community include the distribution of zebrafish strains, transgenic lines, and mutants, along with the distribution of genomics materials such genotyping reagents and chromosome mapping panels. The resource center will also provide training for students and other trainees who need to learn advanced experimental techniques. Finally, the resource center will be the site of multi-investigator genetics projects such as screens for novel mutations affecting specific genes, screen for small molecules with biological activity. Such projects are often too large and costly to be carried out by individual laboratories but are amenable to groups of investigators who use a common facility. The national zebrafish resource center will facilitate studies in developmental genetics in several Canadian laboratories and will contribute to the continued increase in the research involving this important model system.